Wikipedia talk:Good Article proposal drive 2023

WP:GAPD23

This Request for Comment was closed on February, 18, 2023. Thank you to everyone who participated.

Discussion

Proposal 1: Implement an awards system

No consensus: supporting arguments were generally weak, but opposing arguments were much stronger and even persuaded some to change their views. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:18, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Support for this proposal. There isn't much recognition out there for GA reviewers, even though it can (especially with thorough source checks, see below) be a very time-consuming task. And who doesn't like collecting shiny things? Not sure how detailed the awards could be, but maybe there could be something for people who review old and/or very long nominations. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽

This can be started by any editor, and I encourage those who want this to WP:BEBOLD and start sending out the barnstars. I would also support a page where editors can brag about the number of reviews they have done, similar to Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of DYKs, but for reviewers. Z1720 (talk) 02:14, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have whacked together a simple GAR award message in my sandbox as a starter for ten for an alternative to the usual barnstars. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 12:29, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Unexpectedlydian I've drafted a quick sample here. Honeslty, there are a lot of templates broken. Please add to is as you see fit. Etrius ( Us) 20:37, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What about an incremental awards system like the one at DYK? It seems to be hampered by a lack of visibility, but I'd be lying if I said those awards weren't a strong motivation for me to get involved in DYK. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:42, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I rate this suggestion a sure, why not. I don't expect this to have a particularly large positive effect, but on the other hand I think the likelihood of significant negative outcomes is negligible. That is to say, this might entice some editors to put in the time and effort to review nominations a bit, but I don't think we're going to see any notable increase in low-quality reviews from editors who just want to collect awards if we implement this. TompaDompa (talk) 22:43, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I guess I'm with TompaDompa here - I'm not really interested or motivated by awards, but if it encourages others then it's a net positive for the project as a whole Mujinga (talk) 12:30, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support per comment above Chidgk1 (talk) 12:58, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Yeah, I'm in the Sure Why Not camp as well. It can't hurt and it might help. We need to try anything and everything that we think will help WP & the GA project. As an editor it is quite disheartening to put in the hard work to level up an article only to have it then languish for a seemingly long time, unreviewed... Takes the wind out of your sails y'know? Shearonink (talk) 03:53, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support, it might possibly encourage a few people, and as folks say, it can't hurt. Not my cup of tea but no matter. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:10, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because when similar efforts have happened through review drives or through WP:CUP it has ended in a lot of poor reviews of short articles to game the system. --Rs chen 7754 03:20, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We could exclude bad reviews from the count? We do this during GA backlog drive, and NPP drives? MaxnaCarta (talk) 11:51, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This requires meta-review (how do you find "bad reviews"?), the main reason why it takes forever after a backlog drive to award barnstars. —Kusma (talk) 15:47, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The main reason the barnstars take forever to award is that all the other coords abandon the drive after a few weeks (one never participated at all) and leave all the work for me. June 2022 isn't complete still because I refuse to do all the barnstar awarding myself like I did for the January 2022 drive. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I know :) I'm not complaining about you here, just wanted to point out that something as simple-sounding as "exclude bad reviews" adds a lot of extra workload to an otherwise lightweight process. —Kusma (talk) 16:21, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose. I used to give out barnstars at FAC for high-volume reviews, and stopped because of concerns about quality. Not sure it would be an issue here but I also think the overhead of administering this fairly is probably not worth it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:16, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support, but I'll note that this is not really the kind of thing that needs to be approved by an RfC. In fact, prior to getting distracted in August, I had been reading a conversation along these lines, and came up with a whole set of ideas about this. My thinking was to go the whole nine yards, and make barnstars and topicons for GA reviews – along with their own special icons that can go in all the same places as the GA icons do. jp×g 07:57, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This user has received {{{1}}} Five Awards.

Ah, yes, here we go. Look at this puppy:

Doesn't that make you wanna put it on your userpage? And check out the userbox as well. I think it goes well with what we have: article creations are gray, DYKs are blue, GAs are green, FAs are bronze, and GA reviews are fuscia. I've also created WP:Five Award, with a very rough sketch of what I think could be useful in this regard. jp×g 08:32, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I want that. But in all seriousness, I'm not sure if the Five Award is viable. The point of the Four Award is that all of its aspects are part of the same article, but this one has an added requirement that's completely unrelated. I really do like the fuchsia symbol though. As far as accessibility, how easily can colorblind users tell it apart from the standard GA symbol? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:56, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. It would be better make a variant of the WP:CROWN that requires reviewing, as that can be about different articles, and WP:FOUR is very much about everything is the same article. —Kusma (talk) 17:17, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See User:Etriusus/sandbox2 for a very basic brake-down in the style of WP:CROWN. I like the idea of a five award but perhaps it should be refined a little to apply to the same article. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 03:00, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Kusma. 4A is a really specific award that recognizes steady improvements in a single article by a single person. Previous attempts to add 5A/6A for things like being WP:TFA, or becoming part of a WP:FT, have been rejected as out of scope for the award because they don't denote improvements to the article. Reviewing other articles is also obviously out of scope for 4A, and thus not appropriate for being added as a 5A. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:30, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I've figured out how to use a text editor to change the colors in SVGs, so check out File:Symbol star FA gold spun 180.svg and File:Featured article star spun 180.svg. I am thinking that these might be good for something along the lines of the proposal, somewhere down below, for featured/distinguished/etc GA reviews. jp×g 22:14, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tend to support: although we'd likely need to set some pretty high milestones, just in order to balance this award with something like Wikipedia:Triple Crown, Wikipedia:Four Award or the Wikipedia:W Award, this could be a good way to attract potential new reviewers and encourage them to meet expectations right from the start - something I'm currently experiencing right now, by the way. Obviously, it would be crucial to keep valuing quality over quantity, in order to avoid "GA farming" tactics. Oltrepier (talk) 18:52, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose. I'm not sure this would provide significant incentive to get people reviewing. I also share Rschen7754 & Mike Christie's concerns about it providing a perverse incentive for weak reviews if we just count everything. On the other hand, given the subjective nature of reviewing, I'm not sure we can come up with an objective standard for what constitutes an 'awardable' review. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:37, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Premeditated Chaos could we not exclude bad reviews like we do during the GA backlog drive? MaxnaCarta (talk) 11:49, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Who's gonna do the labor of spot-checking hundreds of reviews? We hardly have enough reviewers, let alone reviewers of reviews. Almost no one bothered doing checks of reviews during the last backlog drive, so it mostly fell on @Trainsandotherthings, and as he will tell you, it's a damn lot of work. I'm just not sure the work to reward ratio is in our favor here. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:20, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can confirm, doing the work for January 2022 probably took me something like 10 hours at least. I'm on strike now; until the other coords do their part or someone else volunteers, the June 2022 backlog drive will never have all its barnstars awarded. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:18, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Very fair points. I never got mine, and this is probably why. I've gone from "Why the heck not" to 51/49... MaxnaCarta (talk) 02:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Maybe add in civility reminders that thanking / praising good reviewers is appreciated, but reviews are very subjective. This requires subjective awards, which rules out most "contest" type schemes that would just count reviews. SnowFire (talk) 09:07, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Measures to encourage reviewing are a good idea. There tends to be more nominations than people willing to review. Gaming is not something I am concerned about. People can already game by waiting until a backlog drive occurs in order to review if they are purely chasing badges. Just like when we have a backlog drive, standard awards can be made contingent on the issuer of the award spot-checking reviews to ensure they have been done properly. If we consider people undertaking tasks because there is an award on offer to be "gaming" then it is something most people who have participated in positive conduct can be guilty of at some stage. I am motivated to write good content, sure. But why? I do very much enjoy writing and that is a huge component of it. However, sometimes I spend hours polishing the chrome because I want it to be as good as it can be. Part of that is pride in my work, Part of it is also because I want to receive a GA, DYK, or FA badge I can be proud of, or see a high readership. Nothing wrong with a little dopamine hit. The issue would be on high numbers of poor quality reviews in order to earn badges. That is clearly unacceptable, but people doing this would be caught out pretty quickly when their work is spot-checked. It is not a massive problem during backlogs, so it should be fine in the ordinary course. MaxnaCarta (talk) 11:47, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
turns out it IS a massive problem during backlogs...so will need to consider my position. MaxnaCarta (talk) 02:19, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose please please no; the reward culture is already a considerable problem in the GA and DYK processes, along with quid pro quo reviewing, and this will only encourage more among those editors for whom the reward culture is a driving motivation (which most certainly does not apply to all who participate in GA). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:35, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please see Proposal 4a, which I support as an alternative (why wasn't that put under this one)? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:07, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Proposal 2: Make spot checking a requirement

There is a rough consensus in favour of Proposal 2, which thus passes. Concerns were expressed about the need to maintain the lightweight, minimally-compliant nature of the GA process. There was no consensus on Proposal 2a, which was questioned on grounds of viability and bureaucracy. Taking both proposals into account, the general consensus seems to be for an explicit mention of spot-checking in WP:GAI, without defining the precise requirements. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:46, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Trainsandotherthings, spot checking is already required : see Wp:reviewing good articles. Also, I do not know how a reviewer could certify that the article is free of original research without checking some of the sources. I would, however, be in favor of making the requirement more prominent. (t · c) buidhe 21:52, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea how this would/could work in practice, but is there a way to force reviewers to do source checks? Maybe when a review is started and a talk page is created, there is a default section for source checks on that page which must be filled in by the reviewer in order for them to pass/fail an article. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 22:09, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I know that using review templates is currently optional, but have we considered automatically including one when creating a review page? For example, when nominating a featured picture, a template is automatically included when generating the nomination page. Perhaps creating a review page could automatically generate one of the review templates, giving new reviewers an existing structure to expand off of, with the added perk of implying what types of things (including spotchecks) should be done. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 22:21, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine some reviewers will want to retain the flexibility they currently have when formatting reviews, so if this was going to be implemented it would have to be high-level. Maybe the reviewer has to check off the criteria in some sort of table, and if any criteria remains unchecked (e.g. source checks), the review can't be completed. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 22:54, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Granted, but perhaps the templates could still be optional even if they are included by default. When the review page is generated, there could be a comment on the top telling users that using the provided template is only optional, allowing more experienced and prolific reviewers to just remove it if they so wish. It may be a slight annoyance for prolific reviewers o always have to remove it, but I'm sure they'll survive the extra five seconds out of their day. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 23:28, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The blank review page is probably more of an intimidation for new reviewers than a default table would be an annoyance for experienced ones. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 23:41, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Support to TAOT's proposal. The most realistic way this could be added is to place the instruction under WP:GAN/I#R3. Criteria 2 could also be modified to make it really beat it into people. Editors don't often check the subpages, that's just the unfortunate fact. It is a larger, endemic problem of WP:GA that our policies are either 'just known' or buried under a series or redirects. Half the time I end up at Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles which defeats the entire purpose of migrating the project to here. Etrius ( Us) 03:04, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You and I both know in practice spot checks rarely happen. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:22, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I should note that WP:RGA, which buidhe cited, is a separate page from the actual reviewing guidelines on the main project space. Having something more explicit than a "generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow" would be ideal. For example, Step 3 states "Read the whole article. Understand its sources." Perhaps rephrasing that to "Read the whole article. Check its sources." would better indicate that we want reviewers to actually look everything over. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 23:10, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I must confess I didn't even know WP:RGA (239 page views this month) was a page, let alone a guideline. I've always consulted WP:GANI (1401 views) and WP:GACR. Ovinus (talk) 07:58, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proving my point that something more explicit and concrete directly on the project page would be very helpful. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 08:30, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Would anyone object to me merging Wikipedia:RGA inside WP:GANI? From there, we can trim/refine the article to be more clear. We already have too many overlapping instructions/templates imo. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 23:29, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That would be really nice. Given it's a guideline (albeit a little-used one), the discussion to merge should probably be planned carefully and advertised on CENT. Ovinus (talk) 23:44, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There’s also some useful stuff in WP:GACN which could be incorporated. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 11:11, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely would like to see a merge here. Have always used GANI and feel it would benefit from beefing up. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 21:31, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You and I both know in practice spot checks rarely happen.

Do we, @Trainsandotherthings? I don't know that. Does anyone ever admit to it? (I imagine that there could be circumstances in which it wouldn't be unreasonable, like 100% offline or paywalled sources.) I find dozens of people talking about paywalls last year, which they probably wouldn't notice if they weren't trying to check sources.[1] Similar searches for other phrases about checking sources were also successful. What's the evidence for spot checks being "rare"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support, in whatever form it comes to (making it more explicit or rewriting). Also support the good idea of including it in all of the default templates. We don't require users to use those templates, but it's a strong signal and will help new reviewers. I find the model Ovinus is currently hitting me with at Talk:East Timor/GA1 to be a good one (just a header, a relative to diff/oldid link, and a list of sources), although perhaps we can cut to somewhere between 3-10 in the templates and then add a "..." below. CMD (talk) 10:13, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely This is a great way to make sure that good articles are actually, well, good and not something randomly thrown together in two hours. Unlimitedlead (talk) 02:40, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Weak support the one concern I have is given that quality/academic sources tend to be WP:PAYWALLed or and higher quality sourcing. Additionally, not all sources are in English. Ironically, this may have unintended effect of more reviews of articles with lower quality sourcing like online newspaper etc.. All in all, still a good proposal. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 02:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Spotchecking wouldn't require reviewers to look at every source, especially those that are paywalled. Just ensure that at least most are up to par. 02:56, 3 January 2023 (UTC) Krisgabwoosh (talk) 02:56, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. WP:GACR#2b already covers what we would need from this as part of meeting the bare minimum of WP:V. If it needs clarity that the only way a reviewer can ensure that quotations and contentious material are sourced appropriately is to confirm the citation in the source (i.e., spot check), then I could support codifying that. Otherwise a blanket spot check is not needed, as GA is only a minimal compliance check. Requiring GANs to be like the example above is a recipe for increasing the backlog, as it puts undue burden on the reviewer and requires nothing of the nominator. We should generally do the opposite. I would support a requirement that the nominator confirms that they've spot checked the refs, to make confirmation by the reviewer easier. czar 05:03, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, so long as this is a spot check, meaning that it only requires a check of some of the sources. Something like "check a minimum of 5% of the sources, and no less than five in total". If we get much beyond that this is no longer a lightweight process. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:42, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support for this particular suggestion. We should agree on the percentage and minimum number, but I think this is a good way to make sure spot check but keep it lightweight and not intimidating. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 11:14, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, a minimum yet reasonable number of spotchecks should be explicitly stated. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 12:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I usually check 3-5 sources that they cover the specific sentence that I'm reading, and I see no reason why this wouldn't be suitable. My issue might be that I don't really know how you would police this. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:24, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, per Czar, and a little bit per Lee. GA is intended to be a relatively lightweight process. Even FA doesn't require spot checks except for first-time nominators (nb. this is a bit buried but it's discussed here). Forcing spot checks at GA will only increase the burden on reviewers, which will increase the backlog, and I doubt it will have any great increase in text-source integrity for a couple of reasons.
First, I don't believe there is a widespread problem with source-text integrity at GA. Most nominators are acting in good faith and have a reasonable understanding of their topic areas, so most spot checks are going to be extra work just to prove that everything is, indeed, fine. If an editor is known to be repeatedly nominating articles that turn out to have serious issues, we should be much quicker to topic ban them instead of upending our entire process just to attempt to deal with them.
Second, if we require checks but state that only a portion of sources must be checked, most reviewers will check what is easiest to access. This means that the most difficult sources, such as those that are offline, paywalled, or not in English - precisely the ones that are most likely to need checked - will in most cases go unchecked. So again, we are burdening the reviewer with extra work yet will explicitly be allowing them to avoid looking at the sources most likely to be problematic. All in all, I simply don't see the cost-benefit ratio working out here. (And third, indeed - how do you police it? Are we going to have people spot-checking the spot checks? Who will spot check their spot checks?) ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:43, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support: since it's unclear whether or not spotchecks are already required, let's make it explicit. They are required. Before we get into the weeds of how this will affect the backlog and so on, we have to ask what the point of a review is. It is to assess whether the article meets the GA criteria. If you've not looked at the sources, you don't know whether it meets criterion 2 or even if it contains copyvios (Earwig does not catch everything and lots of copyvio comes from sources cited in the article). You've not done a GA review. You've assessed whether it meets the standard of being a plausible-looking hoax.
I spotcheck (or, where I can, check every source) on every process that requires assessing notability or verifiability: FA, GA, DYK, AfC, even whether to rate an article C-class or not. There are some names where I think "this is a waste of time—I trust their sourcing", but I check anyway, because otherwise I'm not doing a quality review. If you can't access the sources (any of them? Really?), you can ask the nominator, or you can decline to review. But the point of clearing a backlog is not to make a number go down. It's to rigorously assess a particular set of standards, which includes verifiability. — Bilorv (talk) 23:25, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, we must not make the rules repetitive and overlapping. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:10, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose should be lightweight, and what if books or offline newspaper articles are used as sources? What then? --Rs chen 7754 03:21, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Spot checks would only apply to accessible sources. CMD (talk) 06:17, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And what about when 50-75% of them are offline (as in many of my articles)? What then? --Rs chen 7754 20:35, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
25% accessible sources is already far more than would be expected to be looked at, so if that is the extreme example then there isn't likely to be much of an issue. CMD (talk) 01:10, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe, but it makes the spotcheck look like useless bureaucracy that does not actually improve the status quo. --Rs chen 7754 22:32, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support (as not explicitly stated above). We need to make it clear that this is expected of reviewers. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 16:59, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 15:59, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 2a: Specify a minimum number of sources to check

Separating this proposal out into its own heading as it is related to proposal 2 but may benefit from another thread. To repeat what @Mike Christie has written above, a rule could be "check a minimum of 5% of the sources, and no less than five in total". To give my opinion, I was thinking more "around 10% of the sources, and no less than five in total". Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 20:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support I would probably push for somewhere closer to 30%, it is a lot but source reviews are hugely important in the GA process. The only problem with this rule could be with it’s implementation, not sure how to accurately gauge how many sources the reviewer has checked. Personally I always try to read or at least skim the majority of sources in an article I’m reviewing but I appreciate others may find this too much. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 21:04, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Unexpectedlydian I would support this, but would also want some indication it actually happened, a question Lee Vilenski raised. Easiest way to do that, without requiring a peer review, would be to have the reviewer list which of the sources they spot checked. Since writing that out can be tedious, lowering the number to 3 sources or 5% of sources would be reasonable imo. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:04, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What proportion of GA nominations have predominantly or entirely offline/paywalled sources? I imagine the average GA reviewer has access to Wikipedia Library, but even so, it's something that would need to be taken into consideration. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:10, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am weary of codifying any rules that specifically state you shouldn't review pay-walled options. In practice it doesn't happen since it would be unreasonable to find someone with a subscription to obscure websites (e.g. the Des Moines Register), but that precedent led to the infamous Coldwelling. Maybe recommend that reviewers install a paywall blocker or have access to the Wikipedia Library before reviewing. Something noncommittal but still a suggestion. Etrius ( Us) 22:55, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A few times I've had someone find a book I used in a local library (one DYK reviewer found a copy of The Rail Lines of Southern New England in their university library and took a look out of curiosity), but in general we can't expect people will always be able to access paywalled or offline sources. I had to pay $35 to get a copy of one of my books for my current FAC; to ask a reviewer to spend money to get a copy of a book just to spot-check would be absurd. There needs to be some amount of AGF, but we should at the same time be doing some amount of due diligence and check a few sources. If everything is offline, you could ask the nominator to provide an excerpt from the source. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:59, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I will note that in recent reviews, I have generally stuck to at least five, and beyond 50 total in-line citations 10 percent, selected by random number generator. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 22:25, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Support the idea, don't support the 10%. GAs differ in length, 10% can be a lot. 5% maybe. Five is fine. I don't think paywall is an issue, this is just to get a feel for text-source integrity, it's not meant to be a thorough investigation. Reviewers not checking paywalled and offline sources is fine. CMD (talk) 02:17, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I think it's extremely rare to find an article where the offline sources have been misused -- too closely paraphrased, or copied directly -- while the online accessible sources are used perfectly. If I spotcheck three sources and one is a problem, I would check at least three more, and if I run out of online sources I would ask the nominator to quote the material from other sources. I've failed GAs because of material quoted in that way. True nominator malfeasance, where they lie baldly, is rare enough that I've never seen it. So I think a small sample, starting with whatever sources the reviewer can access, is good enough, so long as the reviewer knows to check more if any fail. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:46, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like this approach. I'm not sure that it's compatible with writing a specific rule, but I think it's a good approach. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support any percentage between 5% and 10% and/or any minimum number of sources between 3 and 10. This should be taken AGF: a reviewer doesn't need to give numbers of each source they spotchecked, just like they don't have to specify that they've checked each GA criterion.
Even a small sample is generally enough to hit most systemic issues in sourcing. And if you encounter the same type of issue with two sources, you either need to fail the article or review more sources. The point of spotchecking is to identify issues across the whole 100% of sources, not to make sure there is at least 10% verifiability in the article. — Bilorv (talk) 23:34, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as pointless. As others have said above we require articles to meet WP:V and contain no copyright. At a minimum this means some sources need to be checked anyway. Setting any required number is going to be arbitrary. Plus there is no way to enforce this. Aircorn (talk) 15:54, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as above, this isn't the way to go and it's basically unverifiable given the lack of available oversight. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:12, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
By extension, this means that the entire GAN process is unverifiable, if nobody is conducting any oversight and we let people get away with no source or spotchecks. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:05, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I understand that this would be difficult to verify, but I think we need to be realistic in making instructions for reviewers which will actually force people to check sources. In current reviews, unless a reviewer explicitly states that they have checked sources x, y, z, you have to just assume they did spot-checking. At least with a rule like this, you have more certainty that a reviewer has fulfilled that requirement. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 20:28, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as above in Prop 2. WP:GACR#2b already covers the extent of our "spot check" needed (to confirm quotations and contentious material). Beyond that, checking random refs has diminishing returns for which the reviewer cannot be held responsible for picking the "wrong" links to spot check. GA is only confirming the bare minimum of policy compliance. czar 17:14, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Oppose While I'm very in favor of Prop 2, this seems overly bureaucratic and perhaps even unenforceable if enough off-line sources are utilized. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 15:59, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Proposal 3: Adopt "quid pro quo"

Near unanimous opposition, Result: not passed. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 16:24, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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I'd just like to preempt any such concerns by explaining that any implementation of QPQ would probably require a grandfather clause. I.e., a prolific nominator with 100 nominations and only 1 review would not suddenly need to review 99 articles to start nominating again. Rather, they'd need to review 1 article in order to nominate their 101st article. There are questions as to how we would monitor that. The easiest would be to simply reset nomination and review numbers, though that might prove unpopular. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 22:24, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't yet made up my mind on a QPQ rule. But before we impose a requirement, I say we ought to observe the backlog after the recent addition of GA review count to each nominator. To avoid shaming people who have a very high nom-to-review ratio, but without something artificial like "reviews since the epoch", we could also add "number of ongoing reviews" next to the number of total reviews, or # of reviews in the past month. Seeing that a nominator has a review or two open themselves may be encouraging. Ovinus (talk) 07:53, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not a fan of QPQ here, it doesn't fit like it does at DYK. Both writing GAs and reviewing GAs are significant tasks, and asking them to run concurrently or sequentially feels disruptive. If the issue is over-prolific nominators, better to address that in another way. CMD (talk) 10:08, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would be in favour of this. Right now there's no consequence for editors who nominate lots of articles but do not review. Telling them that they have to review if they want more nominations might encourage them to start contributing to the process. Z1720 (talk) 01:33, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There would result in an overall net negative. Forcing people to do reviews when they don’t want to will inevitably result in a lower quality of review. Reducing the backlog is not worth that. Aircorn (talk) 04:18, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
QPQ has been rejected for Good Articles several times, and for good reason in my opinion. Given how big of an ask it is, it would stifle contributions in both quality and quantity. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:45, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't be in favour of this right now. DYK QPQ is necessary to ensure there are always reviewed DYKs ready for the front page. GAs don't have the same urgency. And as others have mentioned, I wouldn't want to discourage people from writing GAs. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 18:10, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm opposed. The potential benefits do not outweigh the drawbacks of potentially (1) discouraging high-quality nominations and (2) encouraging low-quality reviews. TompaDompa (talk) 22:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Reluctantly oppose. I'd like to see editors have this attitude about their own reviews and nominations, but enforcing it has negatives as several have noted above. Even the limited version suggested by Krisgabwoosh below has the same negatives. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How do we feel about a sort of "semi-QPQ"? Perhaps, rather than a 1-to-1 review per nomination, it could be 1-to-5 review per nomination or even 1-to-10. I agree with @Chipmunkdavis: that QPQ runs the risk creating many lackluster reviews by people who want to get it over with to continue nominating. Oppose I'm starting to see the drawbacks of QPQ myself and I don't entirely agree with the solution I proposed. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 02:33, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I say this as someone with 28 reviews and a total of two noms. This would encourage low quality GAN reviews while being inflexible about the different skill sets involved in reviewing and writing articles. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 11:07, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose consistency in the quality of reviews needs to be improved, as others have noted, I see this as potentially doing the opposite. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 11:28, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 13:29, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Too many drawbacks unfortunately. In an idea world this would work amazingly, but Wikipedia isn't there. Etrius ( Us) 13:39, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose on the basis that Mike Christie's idea below is better. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:26, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Also preferring the idea raised below. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 20:55, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In a perfect world, everyone would voluntarily do a review for each nomination they do, and all would be in balance. But we don't live in a perfect world. In theory I would support this, but in practice we know it would result in people either doing drive-by reviews or just boycotting the GAN process entirely. So reluctantly I can't support this. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Having recently decided to nominate an article for GA, I was going to do some reviews and when I was looking over the GA Nominations page I was stunned when I realized that there are some GA Nominators with zero reviews but many many GAs. No wonder we have a backlog. No wonder. I am going to pay serious attention to that stat in the future when I decide what articles to review. The editors who have a more proportionate ratio of reviews to GAs will get my attention...I had no idea. Shearonink (talk) 05:24, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose regretfully. Unfortunately, this seems like it has a huge potential for abuse, as it might encourage quick passes or quick fails. I'd prefer something like proposal 9, in which prolific reviewers' nominations are prioritized. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:59, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Too much hard work for people like me who don't enjoy reviewing Chidgk1 (talk) 13:07, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, this is exactly not what we should do; as Epicgenius says, it could readily encourage counterproductive behaviour. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:13, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 4: Proposed model reviews

There is consensus that model reviews should be made available to serve as a guide for new users, with the understanding that they should not be used to enforce any specific reviewing style. Per Proposal 4A, this will be implemented in conjunction with an award system for exceptional reviews. Proposal passes. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:41, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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I have gotten some great GAN reviews in the past; these two stand out for their thoroughness, but I'm not sure they are great examples for exactly this reason. Has anyone got a really well done, but less lengthy review that could serve as a model? (t · c) buidhe 08:51, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Guerillero's review for me at Talk:Black Christian Siriano gown of Billy Porter/GA1 was really good, in my opinion. It concisely nailed what needed to be fixed to bring the article to FAC (since he knew that was a possibility). It is more freeform and doesn't directly address the GA criteria in the review, but it could be useful as an example of a GA review style that doesn't slavishly follow the GA templates. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:01, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My first-ever GA nomination was for the article Germán Busch. Looking back at User:Tayi Arajakate's review (Talk:Germán Busch/GA1), it was probably one of the best intros to GA I could have had. I was a fresh editor back then and the article I nominated clearly did not meet the standards for GA. Rather than quick fail it, as they easily could have, Tayi took the time to walk me through the steps of making it up to par. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 22:32, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The last thing we wont to do is standardise reviews. Would be in favour of writing an improved guideline to outline expectations to help new reviewers, but the strength of GAs is in that apart from some minimum standards it doesn’t dictate how reviews are conducted. Aircorn (talk) 04:27, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I am not calling for standardization of reviews, but I do think there should be a diverse set of reviews that are recognized for their quality. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 04:31, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don’t think the diversity exists. Quality reviews could range from a simple pass/fail to a detailed review longer than the article itself. It depends on subject matter, broadness, experience of reviewer, quality of nom and a whole host of other factors. I feel this is much better described in a guideline format. Aircorn (talk) 04:46, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would support this, and I'd like to add to Sammi Brie's comment that the selection should be diverse. Shorter reviews and longer ones, reviews that use templates and those that don't, and maybe reviews for different types of articles (biographies, history articles, science topics, movies, etc) because the approach can be different depending on the type of article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:49, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I believe we should be more opinionated about what templates to use, to take away the guesswork involved for newbies. Perhaps preloading a template when creating a new page, a spot for the 5+ sources spot checked (if Proposal 2A passes) etc.. Experienced reviewers can disregard the default templates still. And extra emphasis on highlighting the reasonable/short reviews as realistic/aspirational ones, not the most extensive/complex ones that will scare prospective reviewers away. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:12, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to suggest that a some "model" failed review examples should be included too. Xx78900 (talk) 12:46, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's a nice idea to reward exceptional/thorough reviews, which I think happens organically with barnstars as it is, but I would leave the "model" examples to WikiProjects to curate, as we hardly need more reasons to point to GA reviews as not being thorough enough "as the models". Minimal acceptable "models" could be useful for reviewers who only present the criteria and need guidance to add some explanation of how/why the article meets the criteria. czar 05:10, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Czar, the idea isn't to "reward" exceptional reviews, it's to provide examples of various review styles for editors who are new to GA to look at. One of the biggest concerns I see from people asking about getting into GA reviews is not feeling like they understand how to do them, even when following the GA instructions and templates. Having models provides people with examples to follow and check themselves against. If you're opposed to the idea of picking extant reviews, I suppose we could write up some entirely fictional reviews as examples. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:29, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It may not be the intent of this proposal but I think it's the natural conclusion. Designating "models" inherently creates a standard/bar by virtue of its existence. For a new editor requesting a model article, reading in-between the lines, they really want to know the standard of reviewing. I'd sooner direct them to random, recent GA reviews so that they understand the variety of quality instead of "ideal" reviews (which most reviews will not be). Having the encouragement to start at any level of quality is more important than following a specific model of review.

I think a second natural conclusion of choosing "model" articles is the honor of peer recognition of exceptional reviews, which I'm arguing is a good thing and a side-effect that should be made into the point of the proposal. The act of selecting the best peer reviews (across any forum—GA, PR, FA, talk pages) of the month would honor that time-intensive work in a way that we currently do not as a community, and in so doing it creates a high-water mark for quality without creating the implicit pressure that this should be the norm for a new reviewer.

Not opposed to extant reviews at all, just mindful of what it socially reinforces. czar 06:32, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Right, I see where you're coming from. I like your suggestion about using random recent reviews instead. I wonder if there'd be a way to implement that with a simple link, like, "click here to see a recent review" or something, like how Category:All orphaned articles lets you click for "Random page in this category". There's discussion below about changing the default instructions, maybe it could be placed there, or on the mentoring page if that takes off. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:45, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, along with 4A below, for reasons that I explained there. When I started writing articles to nominate for GA, I had a very good template to work from: a long list of GAs and FAs written on the same subjects, which many people had signed off as being paragons of quality. But when I started reviewing GAs, there was basically nothing to go off. Even if I looked through a list of recent GA reviews, there was no way for me to tell which represented a good and thorough review, a lazy review, or an overly particular review: as a consequence, I held off on doing one for quite some time. At this point, I am very comfortable with the process, and I think so is everybody commenting here, but for those who haven't been properly initiated, I think we are asking a lot; "you should do a review that meets our standards, but we will only give you general criteria with very wide room for interpretation, and we don't even have examples of what it's supposed to look like". jp×g 22:26, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@JPxG, would you need authentic reviews, or would some pretend reviews be useful to you? I share your worry about following a flawed model, and many GA reviews are imperfect in some respect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:16, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I think this is a great idea that would make the nominating process less daunting for newcomers. I know that when I started nominating articles, I would have loved a few models to help me get better situated.--Gen. Quon_[Talk] 19:07, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 4A: Recognize exceptional reviews

Proposal seems both widely supported and a happy medium to a few previous proposals. Implementation will be delayed since this may be contingent on proposals 1 and 4. Proposal passess 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 23:48, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Open a page to collect noms on a rolling basis for a perennial "Exceptional Review of the Month" recognition. Let's not get lost in the details of what qualifies, as the point would be mainly to recognize exceptional reviews affirmed by the community. I.e., reviews of difficult subject matter or broad/Vital topics, reviews that are exceptionally welcoming to a new reviewer, reviews from an expert in the field who wouldn't normally review. Basically we'd encourage nomination of these and any reviews over some voter threshold would get barnstars and their review shown in a place of honor for some limited time. This would effectively address the heart of Props 4 and 1 while providing a format for peer recognition. I'd like for editors to "collect" exceptional review recognition the way that other editors collect GA and FA icons. czar 09:23, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support – I think this is a nice idea to encourage a positive community of reviewers and ensure that reviews don't disappear into the ether once an article becomes GA. This system promotes quality over quantity, the reverse of which is an issue some people have raised with proposal 1. It would also create a handy list of "Model reviews" as per proposal 4. As you say, the criteria for "exceptional" doesn't have to be overly-complex. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 17:12, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like this one, but it might need a bit of work to get up and running. —Kusma (talk) 18:31, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One idea could be to do this during backlog drives, and to give out "good review" prizes in addition to the "many reviews" ones. —Kusma (talk) 23:19, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Perhaps it could be a modified version of Proposal 1. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 04:31, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support, as an adjunct to Proposal 1: perhaps some bronze-star version of the fuschia GA symbol () would be in order, like the one over to the right here. I have seen some very good GA reviews, and they are basically never read by anyone apart from the reviewer and nominator themselves! jp×g 08:45, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To go into a little more depth: I remember when I did my first review of a GA nomination, I was really confused because I'd never done it before, and I was worried that I would either be too harsh or too lenient on each of the criteria. This was compounded by the fact that there was no system for me to have my review signed off on by a more experienced user; I was concerned that I might just do a crappy review and have it etched in stone on an article somebody worked hard on. I tried to look for some "typical GA reviews" to base mine off, but even when I looked at the similarities between other reviews, it was pretty hard to figure out the difference between "you're supposed to do this" and "a lot of people do this out of laziness". jp×g 22:20, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:00, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support: I agree that this could be a nice sum-up of the Proposals 1 and 4. As a beginner myself, I'm striving to improve my general skills as an editor and, in some cases, a reviewer, so it would definitely be useful to have some kind of "cornerstones" to look at during this process. It would be a really nice positive feedback for the nominated reviewers, too! @Czar This would look similar to WP:EOTW in its main targets, right? Oltrepier (talk) 19:52, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not opposed to that, definitely. I was personally thinking some kind of vote by acclamation like FASA, i.e., offer a period for others to chime in, complimenting the aspects they liked, such that the final talk page message recognizing the recipient can reflect that show of support. Open to ideas and workshopping. czar 21:26, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I like this idea, as it would incentivize folks to perform quality reviews, fixing one of the weaker elements of GAN (imho).--Gen. Quon_[Talk] 19:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I would prefer some "gets the job done" reviews, which do what they need to and get out. I suspect they will be a more comfortable example for new reviewers. CMD (talk) 00:49, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, this is the kind of award that works. But I suggest !voting along the lines of how MilHist awards are done. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 5: Make the mentorship program more visible

Strong support overall, there is also discussion that the mentor program should be redone and possibly automated. At the very least, the program should be made more visible. passes 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 22:32, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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I support this, but overall I think the mentorship program needs to be revamped. Right now it's just a list of users, some of whom are inactive. Reaching out to someone specifically can be intimidating for a new user, and there should be a reasonable assurance that the mentor is active. I don't know what it would look like, but there should be a better system to pair mentors with new reviewers. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:54, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Good article help got closed down a few years ago. The mentors are listed as a subpage of that which isn't ideal. They should probably be moved somewhere else. Not sure where though. Probably need to check a few names on there as it is quite stale. Aircorn (talk) 17:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is mentorship useful? I think it would be more useful, as a new editor, to receive a pre-review as was done here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Green/Meetup/3#20-minute assessment (optional), with the idea that if an editor wants to learn, they can ask follow-up questions. czar 05:13, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Czar To be honest, I actually found mentorship quite useful, since @Kingsif has already given me several bits of advice on how to structure my future reviews. The problem is, I found the mentor list quite casually - it was just linked two times throughout Wikipedia:GAN/I, and I didn't find it anywhere else. Plus, as @Aircorn and @Thebiguglyalien pointed out, there's no real indication about the activity of the various users on the list, so I had to figure it out myself. So, I definitely support this proposal, even though the accessibility issues are likely easier to solve than the ones involving the program as a whole... Oltrepier (talk) 20:08, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Don't want to hijack your idea, but I wonder if we could actually make the mentorship more proactive. I have had maybe three editors reach out to me in about ten years (I don't have the name recognition of others on the list, but still). Mike Christie how hard would it be to make a page that displays editors with less than 5 reviews that have a current review open and keep it updated? If we had such a page and enough experienced reviewers available it would be easy for them to reach out to the reviewer. Just a simple Hi "name", I see you are relatively new to reviewing Good Articles. If I can help in anyway feel free to ping me. If it could be signed off at that page so other editors know it is taken care of that would be useful. Maybe it could even be expanded so new nominators and second opinions get listed there. Sort of a one stop shop for people needing help. Aircorn (talk) 09:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That would be fairly easy to do. It could also be a section on the GAN page, or a flag or note on the entry line in the GAN page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:39, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea and would support it being implemented, as well as signing up as a mentor. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:15, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I would be happy to be a mentor, as well. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:00, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 6: Limit open GANs per editor

I had to write this all down to keep track. 17 support 8 oppose and a handful of conditional for both. No consensus on what that limit will be, just that there should be a limit of some kind. This obviously depends on how 6a turns out. Proposal passes. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 17:31, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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There are some editors who have several open GANs who are choosing not to review, perpetuating the backlog. By limiting the number of nominations, editors will hopefully spend more time reviewing. This in turn will improve their review/GAN stats and encourage more editors to review their own noms. It would also encourage editors to nominate their best work first, as less comments in a GAN will get their article promoted faster, freeing up another spot for their nomination and reducing the amount of time a reviewer needs to spend giving comments on the article. I think five open GANs would be a good number, but other suggestions are welcome. Z1720 (talk) 02:03, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, with the disclosure that I currently have nine nominations open. We should be incentivizing reviews, not disincentivizing other contributions. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe if we can tie it to review ratio. I can think of a couple of editors who nominate multiple articles, yet pull more than their fair share in reviews. I can also think of a few who nominate multiple articles and never review any in return. Practically it might be too difficult to implement though. Aircorn (talk) 18:04, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support A side effect of the default order being changed is that multiple noms in the same area are bunched together much more than previously. I think a cap is needed to keep the items on the list varied as mutliple noms usually nominate in the same area. I would support a cap for each editor in each category ideally, but a total cap is acceptable. Aircorn (talk) 08:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose anything that tries to avoid people making good content is contrary to what we should be doing. If I wanted to review 50 article and nominate another 30, there should be no issue with that. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:31, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this is a good idea. For one thing, I'm not convinced that the existence of editors who nominate a lot more than they review is in itself a problem. Writing high-quality articles and reviewing nominations are to some (not insignificant) extent separate skillsets. For another, limiting the number of open nominations would not in itself reduce the effective backlog, only hide it. If an editor has 20 articles that are ready for nomination but they can only nominate 5 of them, the other 15 may be hidden from the publicly visible backlog but they are in practice only put on a waiting list to be nominated. Without an increase in throughput, limiting the number of open nominations does not in any meaningful way ameliorate the backlog issue. The idea that editors might spend more time reviewing is, I think, a bit optimistic. As I said, reviewing requires a different set of skills and I think it's more likely that they would either keep on doing what they're doing or disengage from WP:GAN entirely. That last point is the most important one to me: this might discourage the nomination (and for that matter creation/curation) of high-quality articles. That's not, to me, an acceptable price to pay for reducing the backlog. TompaDompa (talk) 22:59, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not making any friends with this comment, but I support a limit. I think no more than 20 is more than reasonable. This would also stop the practice of flooding GAN which a few editors have done, adding a large number of nominations at once. We need to balance the desire to have more GAs with the desire to avoid excessive draining of volunteer time. I can only imagine how an editor new to the GAN process would feel submitting a nomination and then having to wait months because a few editors have flooded the list. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:20, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- For context, there are currently two editors with more than 20 open nominations. Both have 31, so if this were implemented right now it would reduce the backlog by 22, from 604 to 582 (3.6%) or from 505 to 483 (4.4%), depending on if one counts all nominations or only the unreviewed ones. TompaDompa (talk) 00:32, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Worth noting this is also preventative; there was a time not long ago when Doug Coldwell had 50 nominations active at once (as we know, it's because he was half-assing them, but still). Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:03, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The point of the GAN list is not to show every article that could feasibly be rated as a GA but to curate a list for active consideration. For comparison, eswiki limits to one active nom per nominator and ruwiki limits to two. czar 02:43, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I suppose the counter argument to the deal at Eswiki is - does that add an atmosphere indicative of creating content? GA is only really an award style process, where we award status to an article. It doesn't mean other articles aren't at that level. However, from my end, a lot of the pull of making content better, in fixing an article up to become GA or featured is part of the reason for doing the work. It is also the same in reverse, if I didn't have lots of things to review, I wouldn't do as many reviews, so in real terms everything goes more slowly. I'd be fine with pushing for a certain amount of reviews before you can nominate another article, but flat out having a limit stifles a lot of my creative wants. I get why this often comes up, but I don't think it's the way to go. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:44, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have supported such a measure in the past, and continue to do so. My previous suggestion was a maximum of 3 unreviewed noms per section. Objections regarding discouraging content have never made sense to me, content can be built without GAN, and even if built for GAN, there is no time limit which means submissions must happen immediately after improvement. CMD (talk) 04:17, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I concur with the above, I don't see a limitation to the number of open nominations discouraging content creation. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 09:52, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Abstain I am willing to support this only if the limit is ~30 noms. I don't want to punish people for their contributions but we are not repeating 50 concurrent noms from a single user. The most prolific contributors generally sit around 25-30 GA nominations, anything higher than that likely is sacrificing quality for quantity. That being said, the backlog is a major problem that delays nominations being assessed, thus artificially inflating people's numbers. I was a major supporter of this in the past, but do understand the reality of WP:GA makes this difficult to implement without hurting specific users. Etrius ( Us) 13:55, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. We should be encouraging quality content creation and Good article nominations. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 14:33, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Respectfully, you have 153 GAs and exactly zero reviews. You have no right to say that limiting nominations is wrong when you're a major contributor to our current issue. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:40, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They do have a right to oppose; their position is consistent with the belief that the backlog is not a problem. I added proposal 9, below, because I think it's better to make information visible and let reviewers make the own decisions, without a need to change nominator behaviour. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:55, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, this discussion effects them more than most. They are just the person we need to hear from and I am glad they are commenting. They better than anyone can answer the question of why editors who clearly value Good Articles and know the criteria don't want to review. If understand that and can figure out a way to get them involved in the process it is a win-win. Aircorn (talk) 09:09, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose it's worth pointing out that this obviously effects me and a couple editors more than others too. Whilst I don't always have lots of nominations up, I do sometimes provide 20-40 noms at a time, but I would also provide proportional reviews for those that I nom (I do aim for two reviews for a nomination). I can understand why people are annoyed at a large amount of noms with no reviews, but in my eyes the better way to deal with that is to have them appear at the bottom of the list. Whilst it does make the number of nominations larger, the speed of the actual backlog increases. I know my review numbers wouldn't be the same if I were limited to the amount of noms. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:22, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I object to calling it an "issue" when a user successfully contributes good content. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:07, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine, the community should simply respond by boycotting all nominations by those who repeatedly nominate but refuse to ever review. I follow that practice now, and hope others will join me. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:47, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To elaborate further, imagine that the GAN process is akin to Take a penny, leave a penny. Submitting a nomination is the equivalent of depositing a penny, while reviewing is the equivalent of withdrawing one. Now apply the metaphor to a prolific nominator who never reviews. Our nominator has deposited more than 150 pennies into our take a penny, leave a penny system, and never removed any. This is good, you might say - they're contributing, right? But while each penny in the real world is essentially the same in value, this is where the metaphor diverges from the actual situation. Each one of those pennies is a nominated article. And when you show up and flood the tray with pennies, you are burying other nominations.

If a reviewer deposits 20 pennies and also removes 20 pennies (by reviewing), the system remains in balance. But when someone comes along and drops a train car filled with pennies onto our little take a penny, leave a penny tray, they throw the system seriously out of balance. To restore balance, other volunteers must make a net withdrawal, by completing more reviews than nominations. To restore the system to balance, over 150 times people have had to balance out one editor's additions by completing reviews. This is immensely selfish behavior by the nominator. The balance of our system has become seriously skewed by this behavior, repeated many times by many editors, and therefore we have a major backlog. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:42, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, but I have to agree with what a couple others have said. Contributing quality content is not an "issue". Re: "Respectfully, you have 153 GAs and exactly zero reviews. You have no right to say that limiting nominations is wrong when you're a major contributor to our current issue": Yes, I've promoted 150+ articles to Good status, but that's over 15 years of editing and I rarely have more than a couple articles nominated at the same time. I don't think my GA work is problematic. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 23:50, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose I don’t think people should be prevented from submitting GAN’s point blank, but I have been thinking for a while that people who are submitting large numbers of GA noms should maybe receive a note on their talk page or something nudging them in the direction of taking up some reviews. (strength of nudge is up for debate) REDMAN 2019 (talk) 20:51, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support even a strict number like 1-2. If there's no backlog, the number limit wouldn't matter anyways. As long as there is a backlog, prolific contributors/writers can take the discretionary decisions of which Article to nominate. The most prolific/high quality contributors tend to receive the quickest reviews anyways, because they know the ropes. But newer nominators will be able to stay focused on improving their current nom, instead of seeking a shotgun method to nominating. I would rather review the best noms per each individual believes they made. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:09, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The most prolific/high quality contributors tend to receive the quickest reviews anyways - In my experience at least, that isn't true. I usually have to wait 3-4 months before my oldest nominations are reviewed, even though I've nominated quite a few articles over the years, and even though many of the GA reviews have found relatively few issues. Furthermore, the current list of WP:GANs shows numerous nominations by prolific nominators that have been sitting around for months, including in the math and music sections. – Epicgenius (talk) 16:59, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support some kind of limit on concurrent noms - 10-20 maybe, I think 30 is too high to produce any useful reduction in the backlog, and anything less than 10 is too restrictive. And perhaps those with low review ratios could receive talk page reminders per Redman's suggestion. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:35, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd support this only if coupled to the user's reviewing rate. Something like the following: If you have more than 5 GAs and your reviews-to-GA ratio is under 0.5, you can have two open nominations. If your ratio is between 0.5 and 1, you can have five open nominations. If your ratio is between 1 and 1.5, ten nominations; 1.5 to 2, twenty, if your ratio is better than 2, you may have fifty open noms. Numbers open to tweaking, of course. As a compromise extraneous nominations could be displayed "below the fold" instead of on the main GAN page. —Kusma (talk) 14:50, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As nifty as such ratios might be, I don't think we have the capacity to manage them. A flat number is simple to understand for everyone. Linking this to reviews might make nominations feel QPQish. CMD (talk) 15:08, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be open to this. Considering we do actually have this as a raw number already, it's actually doable. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:16, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It might be best to view this as a version of Proposal 9: display all nominations by people who pass the criteria as normal, but create a "hidden"/"below the fold" section for all excess nominations. The bot could easily decide what gets displayed prominently and what is a further click away, and the criteria can be as complicated as needed as they are evaluated by bot. —Kusma (talk) 15:53, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think any approach that hides some nominations under some conditions is equivalent to QPQ for those nominators. If we're not hiding, just changing the order of display, then I agree that this is just another proposed sort order. Any reasonable sort order is possible, but I think if we're going to mess with the sort order we should do something simple and easy to understand to start with. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:23, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think hiding is equivalent to QPQ; hiding "excess" nominations just means non-reviewing nominators will only have some of their noms visible in the normal queue. It is a throttle that means they may need to wait longer, not a requirement to do any reviews. —Kusma (talk) 16:42, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I see your point -- it doesn't require them to do reviews, it's just an incentive. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:46, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support-- I can think of no reason someone would need to have more than 10-20 GANs open at once. It just overwhelms the system and overshadows the nominations of other users. I'd prefer Kusma's suggestion above, but I think some limit is better than none, even if relatively high. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 21:27, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- A reason? --- because GANs can languish in the queue for as much as 130 days ... and yes, some of them may have been worked on bit by bit over several years, until eventually a bunch of are ready ... and if you look at the list, setting the cap at 10 would only cut the queue by 55 (assuming you quickfailed the surplus? is that really what you want to do?); setting the cap at 20 would cut the list by only 18 out of 597 today, i.e. basically it'll make no difference to the queue length, just be a pain for those of us who've been waiting a long time already...
- So, Oppose, the measure won't achieve anything useful. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  No, the proposal would presumably only take effect on nominations made after it was instituted (nominators with more open nominations than the cap would likely be 'grandfathered' in). It's more to prevent swamping of the queue in the future, in my understanding. We have seen nominators with completely unreasonable numbers of nominations in the past and it is reasonable to assume that it would happen again. Also, a queue that is 55 smaller does seem to me like a worthwhile decrease to me, almost 10%. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 14:05, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  A technical note: grandfathering should be fairly easy to do -- there's a nomination timestamp for each nomination, and anything prior to that date could be ignored for the purposes of a cap. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:23, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I know this perennial discussion provokes a range of opinions, but for me it's clear, I only ever tend to have a maximum of two GANs open, mainly because just as I wouldn't do too many GA reviews at the same time, it seems unfair to nominate more articles than I could work on all at once. So for me it seems absolutely reasonable to say maximum 5 GANs, since I don't know how anyone could deal with more than that all at once. And as a happy corollary it would bring the total number of open GANs down considerably. Mujinga (talk) 12:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It seems reasonable even from a nominator's point of view, as having too many of your GANs reviewed at the same time would be hard to cope with. I'd support a limit in the 10-20 range as suggested by others above. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 22:15, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: there is no easy cut-off number and there are a number of prolific nominators who I trust to have taken time and care over each article they nominate. Individual contributors should be contacted in a low-stakes, low-profile way in the first instance if there is an issue, like on their talk page. If there are no CIR issues and the nominator is putting effort in then we shouldn't be suppressing nominations, particularly if QPQ is not required.
For topics I am really interested in, I'll take up a GA review ad hoc as soon as I see it's been nominated. Otherwise, I try to review when I nominate or periodically to help the backlog. I don't know whether my behaviour is typical, but if it is then the true backlog (articles that people want reviewed) decreases faster the more articles that are nominated concurrently. This is because the larger the list, the more knowledgeable a reviewer can be about their chosen article. — Bilorv (talk) 23:48, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Xx78900 (talk) 12:47, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose limiting open GANs per editor would only work if the waiting time for reviews was very low. But many nominations don't get reviewed for several months. So this would make it impossible for industrious editors to continue contributing while they wait for someone else to review their current nominations. I think connecting it to the review ratio could work, as suggested by Aircorn and Kusma: this way, there is something the nominator can do if they want to post more nominations. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:00, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose a hard cap, but support a soft cap. While I would not want a hard limit (in which you can't make any more nominations ever until one of your articles is reviewed) I'd support a soft cap of between 10 and 20. For example, "if you have 20 nominations, you can only nominate an additional article if none of your current nominations have been picked up for a week". The statistics at WP:GANR suggest that this would only affect a small number of people, though (including me). A hard cap of 10-20 would merely push these people's nominations in the future. Anything lower than 10 would be overly restrictive - other than the Coldwell incident, there is no evidence that nominators with multiple concurrent GANs exhibit a pattern of nominating faulty articles. – Epicgenius (talk) 16:55, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I believe a limit is also preventative. You're certainly one of the most prolific nominators in GAN history, but there's no question that your articles are of sufficient quality (as opposed to Coldwell who spammed half-baked articles into the GAN queue). With that said, you have over 400 GAs and far fewer reviews, though I know you have been reviewing more recently and asking you to do 300 reviews and no nominations is ridiculous. My thinking is a hard limit of 20 would encourage those who hit the cap to review other nominations, bringing the backlog down and making their own nominations get picked up sooner. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:35, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is a fair point. I'll admit that I've dropped the ball on actually reviewing articles, especially since 2019, when my ratio of GAs to reviews only hovered around 2:1. Having over 400 GAs and only 45 reviews is quite embarrassing, which is why I really do plan to review more articles now.
On the other hand, a soft cap makes more sense to me than a hard cap, as a soft cap would prevent people from nominating 50 pages simultaneously, but it doesn't penalize a nominator for not having their GANs picked up (as a hard cap would). If it is true that a reviewer can get their GAN picked up more rapidly by reviewing more nominations, then this distinction would not matter. However, I've observed that conducting a large number of reviews doesn't always correlate to having their GANs picked up more quickly, especially for complicated topics. Hopefully proposal 9 would fix that, but complex topics such as STEM-related topics might still languish. – Epicgenius (talk) 19:57, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The differences in topic and therefore associated reviewers is part of why a per-section limit would be more beneficial than an overall cap, allowing an editor to say keep nominating a bunch of animal articles even if their GAN on obscure musical notation languishes. That said, if the overall cap is as high as 10 or 20, this might not be a significant issue. CMD (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not opposed in principle to a soft cap; my concern is how we would implement and enforce it. Assuming technical details could be worked out, I wouldn't stand in opposition, though I retain a preference for a hard cap. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:40, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One of the ways to implement a soft cap is to figure out what's abnormal, and post that. At Wikipedia:Requests for comment#Multiple simultaneous RfCs on one page we added a box that says it's rare to have more than two RFCs open at a time. We aren't imposing a rule; we're just telling them what's common. Providing a factual statement seems to be enough to restrain people from opening six or ten RFCs (which was rare, and is now basically non-existent). We could do something similar here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:49, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, so long as the cap is set fairly high -- at least 10. And I'd prefer an approach that means the nominations can still be viewed if a reviewer wants to see them -- e.g. ones past the cap are in a collapsed section at the end of the list. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:23, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - any limit... 1-2, or 10-20, whether "hard" or "soft" as proposed above. I don't think that limiting GANs will stop people from making content, but I do think that not limiting GANs overwhelms the available reviewers. Levivich (talk) 03:08, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support a limit of 10 (15 or 20 also feasible). Some people nominate a ton, and I think it's reasonable to have an incentive to reduce the backlog if you are adding a lot to it over a short time period. Nominations above the limit should be allowed but hidden, so that no more than 10 per nominator are visible at any time. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:14, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support conditional to 6A. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:05, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support a limit of five, but suggest that by a consensus discussion, individual editors might be temporarily exempted (see how WP:FAR handles nominations)-- for example, I'm sure Ealdgyth can handle as many as she wants. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:42, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support any reasonable limit. A small cadre of writers shouldn't have a majority of the open GAs to review --In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 11:56, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Proposal 6A: Cap concurrent GA nominations per editor at 20

After a bit of number crunching, it appears a limit of 10 wins out. There was some opposition to a GA cap in this discussion as well but the support for the cap still wins out by a wide margin (5 oppose and 15 support). In general, most who are in support of 20 also see 10 as a reasonable alternative, in all likelihood this will need to be trialed to make sure its feasible. There was also discussion of collapsing GAs over the cap versus outright blocking new GAs, which appears to have support. Overall, the modified proposal passes.

Addendum: Following implementation, consensus was determined that 20 would better be implemented. This is in regards to the interpretation of this thread and the general layout of the nominations page.

🏵️Etrius ( Us) 01:33, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

There's been a fair amount of debate about a limit, with more support for more generous limits. I think a cap of 20 is more than reasonable, and to get consensus I'm proposing it as a separate item. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 04:35, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To make this more specific, can you say what happens to excess nominations -- would they be collapsed or completely invisible? And would we grandfather old nominations? E.g. no nomination prior to adoption of this proposal would be made invisible because of this proposal? My own preference would to grandfather old nominations, and to collapse rather than render invisible. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:48, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have them invisible (well, I'd have them not nominated, so I don't fully understand the question, are you suggesting a bot filter?), and I don't see why it would need to affect current noms. CMD (talk) 06:19, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was thinking this would be a bot filter -- nobody wants to manually police something like this. The bot could silently not list the newest surplus noms, or list them in a collapsed section, in the topic or subtopic or at the end of the GAN page. If it's a bot filter the grandfathering question is relevant because the bot would need to know that older noms get a pass. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:39, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A limit of 20 is going to hit almost no one. Very little effect on the visible backlog, not worth the effort even if we ignore the downsides. —Kusma (talk) 13:52, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If this is going to be bot controlled and thus not even cause the delaying of nominations, a smaller limit feels much more feasible. CMD (talk) 14:00, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, perhaps a limit of 5-10 per nominator and section could help increase the variety of what nominations are open. I prefer 10 species, 10 breweries and 10 video games to 30 football seasons. —Kusma (talk) 14:10, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And yet people further down are screaming that this would directly harm multiple editors. I'm confused. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:54, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support a bot controlled limit of ten or higher (meaning the closest number ≥10 that consensus can be found for). Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 14:08, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support a bot filter of 10 which hides/collapses the excess nominations and grandfathers in nominations that precede this proposal. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:45, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Spammed nominations and other poor quality mass nominations are already dealt with. The only people that this would affect are a small handful of our most efficient content contributors, and I strongly condemn the targeting of a few specific editors because they're too good at contributing. I will oppose any proposal that wants to lower high-quality input instead of raising high-quality output. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:51, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Eddie891's proposal. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 17:00, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There are two main ways to decrease the backlog: (1) more reviews and (2) fewer nominations. Limiting nominations per nominator targets mainly industrious contributors and may result in fewer high quality nominations without more reviews. We should instead focus on reducing low-quality nominations and on creating additional incentives for reviewing. If a limit has to be implemented, then it should be high (maybe 20 is ok but 10 is too low). It would be preferable if additional nominations are allowed but put in a less visible location like the bottom of the list or a collapsed list, as suggested by Mike Christie. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:20, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Limiting nominations per nominator targets mainly industrious contributors and may result in fewer high quality nominations without more reviews. Do you not recall when Doug Coldwell flooded the queue with shitty nominations less than a year ago, having 50 at once? This is preventative, not punitive. With no evidence to back these claims, I cannot find any merit in them. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:55, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Low-quality nominations can already be removed out of hand. Your proposal exclusively targets editors that make high-quality nominations, and I think it's unfortunate that some of our most valuable contributors are being treated so dismissively on this talk page; the whole point of GA reviews is to support these users, not to sideline and insult them. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:37, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you think my goal is to "target" and "treat dismissively" editors who make "high-quality nominations", you are severely mistaken. This is not just about quality, I care far more about keeping the GAN process from decaying to a point it takes half a year or more to get articles reviewed (and for some article we have already reached that point). There's no obligation that editors can submit an infinite number of nominations at any one time. That you think this is motivated by "sidelining and insulting" editors shows you're quick to attack me simply for having a different point of view. I'm very disappointed you'd accuse me of such things. Nobody is being targeted specifically by this proposal, though you interpret it that way (wrongly). Furthermore, many of our editors who create the "high-quality nominations" you are pearl-clutching about already have the self-control and awareness to limit the nominations they have open at once, to reduce the backlog and avoid overwhelming our pool of reviewers. I do this myself - or do I not count as someone who makes your supposed "high-quality nominations"?

I am open to solutions to increase reviewing without applying things such as caps. But it's clear that we have issues, and caps are a valid consideration. You can disagree with that without attacking me. A cap doesn't limit how many articles one can work on or write, just how many can be submitted to GAN at once. FAC caps editors at one nomination at a time, is that also a great evil and an insult to nominators? Twenty open nominations at once is more than fair for a cap; indeed, some have called for 10 or even less.

You also choose to ignore the history of Coldwell's misconduct; it took multiple ANI drama threads and extensive wasting of editor time to deal with him. I am motivated by a desire to prevent anything like that from reoccurring. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:52, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If it seems that I'm accusing you personally of anything, I do apologize. I'm concerned that these will be the things caused by such a proposal. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:23, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The parallel with FAC had not occurred to me, but it is true that FAC has a limit of 1, or 1.5 since you can also have a co-nom, and it hasn't harmed the production of quality. What it's harmed is the recognition of that quality, which is less of a concern. There are editors with dozens of FAC-ready articles who will never get them all promoted, but they keep writing those articles. Similarly at GAN Sammi Brie has said she has scores of articles ready to nominate but has not, in order not to flood the list. This proposal wouldn't limit anyone's ability to write good articles, or to nominate them; it would only limit how many of them would display on the GAN page at a given time. I don't think that would discourage almost any article writer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:45, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think Trainsandotherthings is right that there have been some cases where such limits would have been useful to prevent spamming low-quality nominations. But is that a real problem or just an occasional occurrence? For example, if we were to impose the cap today, would it remove mainly low-quality or high-quality nominations? Spamming of low-quality nominations could be prevented by other measures, like banning drive-by nominations, as is already being discussed, or making the rules for quick fails wider. We could also modify instructions to encourage high-quality nominations. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:04, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Wikipedia should not be discouraging good articles. It takes a long time to build a good article and I do not think that anyone can flood the zone with frivolous nominations. If someone is spamming nominations then deal with it at that point. Jorahm (talk) 18:30, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support 10 as being more reasonable than 20, but I'd support 20 as better than 0. Levivich (talk) 19:45, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, not need for penalty for prolific writers. It wouldn't solve the problem, but can discourage few editors who wrote a lot of GAs. Artem.G (talk) 20:06, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this specific suggestion (as I already did the more general one above). The implicit assumption here is that a handful of editors having several nominations open at the same time causes, rather than results from, the backlog. I'm not seeing compelling evidence that this is the case. Like Thebiguglyalien and Phlsph7, I think our approach should be to try to increase the number of reviews rather than reduce the number of nominations. I see minimal potential benefits and major potential drawbacks to implementing this suggestion. TompaDompa (talk) 22:25, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is perfectly reasonable to restrict number of nominations open per user as large numbers can overwhelm a fairly static reviewer capacity, especially without clear ways to drastically increase the reviewer base. FAC already does have such restrictions-- indeed to a far greater extent than this proposal--yet I doubt anyone commenting here would oppose those limits as punishing people who write content. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 01:00, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The differing dynamics at WP:FAC caused by each nomination needing the support of multiple editors in order to pass alone makes the situations not directly comparable. TompaDompa (talk) 04:47, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that they are not directly comparable, but they are also not completely different… Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 13:36, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I hope that people who opposed any limit in Proposal 6, like mine, will be taken into account by the closer. — Bilorv (talk) 23:31, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support a limit of 10 (15 or 20 also feasible). Some people nominate a ton, and I think it's reasonable to have an incentive to reduce the backlog if you are adding a lot to it over a short time period. Nominations above the limit should be allowed but hidden, so that no more than 10 per nominator are visible at any time. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:13, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. If editors can create enough quality content to have 20+ GA noms at once, major kudos! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 03:41, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Levivich (I made a comment near the beginning but did not give a clear position). I'd much prefer a per-section cap as I have expressed before and as Kusma has also expressed above, but alas this has not gained any traction. There is no "penalty" for those writing GAs; at worst it makes their oldest GANs more likely to be reviewed first, at best it might produce a less intimidating GAN page that brings in a few more reviews, benefiting prolific nominators the most. CMD (talk) 04:48, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. So what if all 20 get reviewed and put on hold at the same time or even a few days apart? I can't see any nominator being able to respond in a timely manner. --Rs chen 7754 05:24, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I've done a fair number of reviews, and I've also nominated ten GAs in the same day; I think that at least some amount of restriction is necessary, although I don't agree with the "two per editor" limit that some have alluded to above. There are also situations in which someone just has a bunch of articles that become ready around the same time, and telling them to take a hike would be a mistake. I think that something that might work is for there to be a limit per user (like ten or fifteen or twenty) after which point an optional QPQ comes into effect to raise a user's limit. Let's say, for example, I submit ten articles to the queue, wait for them all to be processed, and then submit ten more: that would be allowed. And I would also be allowed to submit ten articles, review ten, and submit another batch on top of the first one. Or I can just wait and do it normally. I think this would give people more flexibility than just a limit -- although, if everyone thinks this idea is stupid, just having a limit would be fine too (as long as it was reasonably high). jp×g 08:53, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think this is overly bureaucratic; IMO the community can generally moderate what is "too many" reviews, as was the case with Doug, which it seems like many are implicitly (and some explicitly) referring to. Hard limits seem impractical to me, but an upper limit of 20-ish is not horrendous to me, but that's the lowest I can imagine actually helping. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:03, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support collapsing any nominations above a certain number (say 20) as an alternative to a soft cap. As a last resort, I would support a hard cap. However, very few editors nominate more than 20 GANs at once, and those who do tend to be experienced editors, whom, with the exception of one particular editor, tend not to have systemic issues with their nominations. Epicgenius (talk) 20:02, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support 10, 20 if need be. I don't think a hard cap is worth the burden of enforcement. Since the goal is to keep WP:GAN appetizing (as the main discovery surface for reviewers), it would suffice to suppress any reviews above the limit, if ChristieBot can facilitate that as first-in-first-out. As I've said elsewhere, I'd be in favor of other spin-off listings of all GANs with different sort orders and filters. (There used to be something like this for AfD noms but I can't find it now.) If one of those alternative listings wanted to include the firehose (all suppressed reviews), that would give us the best of all worlds. czar 21:41, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. GAN doesn't have unlimited capacity; if an editor has more than 20 GANs pending, something is probably up. Would potentially allow an even tighter limit, but it'd probably be a soft cap Epicgenius style of "no more than 10 a month" that would still allow going up to 20 if spread out over time where the problem is just a lack of reviewers. SnowFire (talk) 09:11, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice ~~Oppose~~ 20 is too high, but defer to whatever Ealdgyth says she can handle. ~~Anyone who is nominating this much is after it for reward culture, and not likely to be pushing quality~~ SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:43, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I recognize you want a lower limit, but the current status quo is no limit, and a limit of 20 is an improvement over no cap at all, is it not? Personally I'd support 10, but I am skeptical it would get sufficient consensus. We shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:52, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with TAOT. The status quo is no limit, and I also understand your preference for a low limit. However, 5 may be excessively low, given how long GANs tend to languish (often up to 3-4 months).
I'd also say that Anyone who is nominating this much is after it for reward culture is an unfair statement to make, as some editors actually do have legitimate reasons for nominating 20 at a time. For instance, I have 20 nominations right now, but many of them are several months old, and I tend to wait a while before nominating many of my GAs. In other cases, people may nominate GAs that are relatively short but don't need much work to meet all the criteria. Thus, prolific nominators can't all be painted with the same brush. If, on the other hand, it is found that a prolific nominator consistently submits problematic articles for GAN, there are other ways to deal with this (i.e. with a topic ban). – Epicgenius (talk) 23:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Adjust above. Five is my first choice, but I would accept 20 as second choice if five doesn't pass. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:55, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PS, Epicgenius, if the process had Coords (as when Geometryguy used to act as a defacto Coord), you could have a hard limit subject to exceptions granted by the Coords, as we have at WP:FAR. In that case, five would work, and your situation could be handled as an exception, subject to consensus and granted by the GA Coords. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:57, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support any reasonable limit. A small cadre of writers shouldn't have a majority of the open GAs to review --In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 11:41, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Most GA reviews take less than three months, right? In order to clog up your 20 nom limit, you'd have to nominate an article every 4.5 days for three months, ish. And that's assuming every single review takes exactly three months, which, it won't. While that's certainly possible, I don't think that much work for such an extended period of time is very healthy. Additionally, editors have in the past been sanctioned for a constant stream of low-quality GAs - forcing people to take that extra time to chew could lead to them spotting possible improvements on a later day, saving the reviewer's time.
I agree with SandyGeorgia and EpicGenius that this should not be a brightline rule, however, I believe going from stub to GA in 5 days 20 times in a row isn't likely to produce content beyond the bare minimum. casualdejekyll 00:05, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support GA nominations require human reviewer time, which is both limited and precious. Ideally we'd have enough available reviewer time to complete all requested reviews in a timely manner. Since we perennially struggle to accomplish that, I think it makes sense to limit nominations from prolific nominators. If those folks wish to continue nominating articles, they can take on more reviews themselves -- thus freeing other reviewers to keep the system running. As others have noted above, this seems to work just fine at FAC. The rationale for respecting reviewer time by focusing on a limited number of nominations holds here as well. Ajpolino (talk) 18:11, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 7: GAN expiry date

Near unanimous opposition. Result: not passed. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 16:54, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Some nominations remain open for several months and no one wants to review them. In the past, when I reviewed very old nominations the nominator had sometimes left Wikipedia and the time I spent on the review is wasted. This proposal would cause nominations that are very old to expire and be automatically quick-failed. This can hopefully be set up by a bot to lessen editor time. The article can be nominated again. Z1720 (talk) 02:03, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This may be worth considering but only once we get past this current backlog environment. The longest-sitting GA, WVPX-TV, passed six months today. The editor is active; it's just that (as my experience with this topic area can demonstrate) the article title seems to scare people off. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 03:07, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'd argue this is WP:TOOSOON. The idea has merit but would require a far more proactive reviewer base. Perhaps modifying this to automatically remove pages for editors who've been inactive for a set period of time would be a fairer system to implement. Etrius ( Us) 03:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would oppose automatic expiry, but some other system should be in place to ensure that a user is still active if their GAN is open for a while. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

From past experience I would recommend anyone reviewing old noms to contact the nominator first. It might also be worth doing a simple review first and wait for a response before getting too in depth. Writing a detailed review and getting no response is one of the more demoralising aspects of reviewing. To be fair I have also had this issue with relatively recent nominations. Aircorn (talk) 18:14, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe ChristieBot could add some kind of warning to a nomination if the nominator hasn't made any edits in 30 days, so that users are aware the nom may have dropped off. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:02, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would support automatic expiry but only for users that are no longer active, rather than GANs open a certain amount of time. For example it took Sorley MacLean over a year to find a reviewer. (t · c) buidhe 05:07, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Concur with buidhe, editors inactive for a period should not retain nominations. Perhaps set limit to 45 days of inactivity, warning at 30? Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 11:18, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fine with a note about non-active users, but it'd be horrible if you are waiting for a reviewer just to find out it's been removed from the page as being too old if you are active. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:27, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd oppose expiring GAs, but for inactive users a note is easy to add and I'd support that. If it turns out that there are a lot of inactive nominators we could have a separate section at the end of the GAN page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:57, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Expiring is a non-starter as long as we have this much of a backlog. I have a GAN from August 2022 that was only just picked up for review 2 days ago. I've been active that entire time. If the nominator is inactive, the review can be failed after a week since they would fail to respond to comments or concerns from the reviewer. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:42, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, finding a way to identify inactive nominators is a better solution here. Identifying drive-by nominations is another good time-saver, and something I hope Christiebot will end up being able to do. CMD (talk) 02:22, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If ChristieBot could list an error or warning when it sees a nomination by someone who's never edited the article in question, that would be very useful. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 11:55, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is certainly possible in theory, though it might be slow in practice. I can investigate further if this idea gets support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:27, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Drive-by noms are being discussed below at propsal 11 - let's not split the discussion. I've created a separate section at 7A just below to formally propose flagging of inactive nominators. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:22, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd oppose this for active nominators. (If the nominator goes inactive for a few months, we could talk about it). I see it as one of the great things about GA as opposed to FA that nominations only fail if a reviewer finds issues, not just because nobody can be bothered to look at the article. —Kusma (talk) 14:42, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: this artificially decreases a backlog number without solving the actual issue. I also oppose expiry based on an inactive nominator. Sometimes people do keep an eye on their GANs and make their first edit in several months to respond to a review. Even in the case of an inactive nominator, if they've put the work in then why don't they deserve to have that reviewed? I wouldn't oppose a bot comment on the GAN page that the nominator hasn't edited in 30 days—a good tip-off for the reviewer to assume that the article is static and they'll need to pass or fail as-is (or make improvements themselves). — Bilorv (talk) 23:53, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
assume that the article is static and they'll need to pass or fail as-is - If we don't wind up with consensus on expiring inactive nominations, as a second option I like the idea of making this explicit somewhere in the instructions. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:59, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Why should my nomination which has been waiting for ages have to be resubmitted? As it would have a new date it would be less likely to be reviwed and the reviwer would get less kudos. Chidgk1 (talk) 12:55, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - it does not actually get rid of the backlog, it merely pushes the backlog further into the future. Some articles may have to wait a long time simply because of their topic matter or length. I would support having the bot make a comment about inactive or drive-by nominations, though. – Epicgenius (talk) 16:49, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Backlog stays the same, just wastes a few seconds of the nominator's time re-submitting it. Often it seems that articles that sit around the longest are those that are complicated or possibly controversial, such as those relating to the Holocaust. That editors are sometimes wary of reviewing articles, or the article is waiting for a more appropriate reviewer, should not mean the nomination needs re-submitting. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 20:17, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Although I have seen similar things happen before at WP:FAC, I don’t think this should be added as a hard line at WP:GA. Others have already pointed out it doesn’t actually help solve the backlog issue as the article can be re-nominated, but also having a nomination you have worked on and waited for months to get reviewed get failed simply because no-one got around to working on it could be rather discouraging to users new to the GA process. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 09:44, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - if you remove the items that waited the longest, they just get resubmitted as soon as caps or whatever allow, so the queue just takes even longer. Not obvious how that would help in any way. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:18, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 7A: Flagging articles with inactive nominators

unanimous support, Result: passed. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 16:54, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

I'm going to split this out into its own proposal so it doesn't get buried under #7. Assuming it's technically possible via ChristieBot, a flag of some kind should be added to nominations whose editors have not edited in 30 days. The flag would be removed if they start editing again. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:22, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support per above. — Bilorv (talk) 23:54, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support, per my comment above (t · c) buidhe 00:23, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support This feels like an obvious solution. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 00:51, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support, and perhaps we will need to decide what happens if those noms hang around at a later date. CMD (talk) 01:22, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if we don't get consensus above that noms should expire, Bilorv makes a good suggestion about treating these nominations as static and either passing or failing them as-is. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:23, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support the idea of a flag. I don't think we need to prejudge how reviewers would treat the flag -- if I decided to pick one of these up I would start by leaving a note at the review page pinging the reviewer and asking if they were active. If not I would do a static pass/fail, without leaving many detailed review notes. Others might choose to treat it differently, leaving detailed review notes in case the nominator ever returned. I don't see a reason to legislate how the review itself should be conducted. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:50, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support I see clear benefits to doing this, and no obvious drawbacks. TompaDompa (talk) 20:50, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support more metadata on WP:GAN to inform reviewer decisions, per below czar 02:17, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support A easy way to prioritize nominations that will be replied to quickly. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 09:46, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
support seems like a no-brainer. Anything that can be informative is helpful. No need to state what you have to do it the nominator isn't active. You can ping/find someone at the project to do BEFORE you do a full review. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:02, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support This provides some benefits and I do not see any downsides. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:41, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. make sens to me. Shearonink (talk) 03:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support, this is a practical proposal; it is very depressing reviewing a GAN that then never gets actioned. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:18, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 8: Default instructions

Overall support for a pre-loaded set of instructions upon creation of a GA review. Review should be concise but informative, support is also contingent that the instructions are easily removable during page creation. passes 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 21:01, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Edit the template in my sandbox: ~~https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User:Rjjiii/sandbox~~ (update: moved to its own page: https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User:Rjjiii/GA ) This is a rough draft to give a concrete idea of what I mean about a template with instructions. The actual instructions should come from someone more involved with GA, and I've tried to just copy and paste from the GA instructions and essay as much as possible. I don't think experienced editors will be greatly inconvenienced by deleting something like this before a review. For new editors I think having a kind of form to fill out, will be more clear than the current blank slate. The language of these instructions should mirror whatever is on WP:GAI, which should also give prescriptive, actionable steps. This does not change any policies; it provides a default path for reviewers.Rjjiii (talk) 05:29, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure about adding it to a default template, but I had a go at simplifying the instructions a while ago. See User:Aircorn/sandbox. Didn't get around to doing the guideline. The idea was to make the instructions more "what to do" and the guideline more advice on "how to do it". I think overtime the instructions bloat out a bit as editors add to them resulting in repetition and a bit of editorialising. Maybe the guidelines could become a tab when they are improved? Aircorn (talk) 17:38, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, so I misunderstood how Wikipedia would render the template. I've made a static version of what I'm talking about on the same sandbox page.

I think I get what you're saying about a "what to do" and a "how to do it" page. If so, my thought, and again I would try to poll more potential reviewers on this, is that the page with the concrete, step-by-step instructions, should be the default landing area. That should be the main place to send a reviewer, and if the reviewer doesn't open all the links, then they should still end up with a halfway decent result. Rjjiii (talk) 04:03, 4 January 2023 (UTC

Here is an example of how I'm imagining a static template. The idea is that by default, the review box would present a reviewer with a form that would have clear actionable steps:

==== No original research ====

It contains [[Wikipedia:No original research|no original research]]:

<!-- Check at least 1 of every 15 sources to see if the content in the sources backs up the sentence, clause, or paragraph where it's attached in the article. Make note of any sources that do not verify the article's content. -->

Rjjiii (talk) 04:05, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This looks good, I'd support having something like this auto-generated on the review talk page (with the option of deleting it if the reviewer wishes). Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 12:29, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Rjjiii I would be happy to edit this template to preLoad with the name of the Article being reviewed and any other info. I like that this is very beginner friendly, without requiring curly brace heavy tables. The less manual work for reviewers, the more welcoming we become. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:21, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I do still think of this as a draft though. If this or something like it was going to be preloaded, it should be up for the OG's to look over. I tried to copy straight from existing instructions where I could. And I haven't yet put any instructions for broadness because I didn't find anything concrete enough. Rjjiii (talk) 14:54, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't use the review templates myself, and would prefer not to, but I won't oppose this so long as it's clear the reviewer can just delete it if they want to. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:35, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this might possibly help some new reviewers, so why not. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:19, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, a preloaded template like the sandbox draft would be good: new reviewers are likely to find it useful and reviewers who don't need it are not harmed as they can delete it. — Bilorv (talk) 22:03, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Preload. We already have preloaded text when starting reviews, so it's simple enough to revise one of the existing templates (add more instructions as hidden text) and use that. Advanced reviewers can always remove what they want. czar 08:56, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like this idea, though perhaps replace the sub-subheadings with bullet points so that you don't overwhelm the new reviewer with a big TOC. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 22:30, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for feedback. That's a good point. I've updated it to use only one level of headings.Rjjiii (talk) 17:03, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, it certainly would make a difference for first-time reviewers! —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:15, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Tend to support: to be honest, even as a beginner around here, I don't think the instructions, nor the templates are too hard to understand and apply as it stands. However, if we find a way to make the process even simpler and handier, I would happily support it! Oltrepier (talk) 20:15, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I dislike the use of hidden text in this context. If we do this, I very strongly recommend that reviewers be informed (in the text on the page) that they are allowed to remove any part of the instructions. The primary "prescriptive" action I want to see is not exceeding the minimum requirements of the criteria. Reviewers should not even be hinting that noms really ought to do something about, e.g., consistent citation formatting (which GACR has specifically rejected for years). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What are the issues that you anticipate coming from hidden text comments versus the text on the page? Rjjiii (talk) 15:44, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support a preload, but simpler is better and it needs to be as close to idiot-proof as possible (not that there are any idiots on Wikipedia, of course). My main concerns at the moment are that it's a bit bulky and that "delete me" will prompt users to delete all of the preloaded text even if it says where to delete. But I would expect a lot of fine-tuning before any launch of something like this. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:25, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Proposal 9: Change sort order of GAN page to prioritize frequent reviewers

Strong support in favor of this proposal. Result: passed 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 04:02, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Sorting the GAN page so that the format is unchanged but nominators who review frequently come higher on the list will reward reviewers (since some reviewers will work from whatever is top of the list) without limiting the number of nominations or requiring quid pro quo. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:29, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking out loud, could this also be a way to softly implement quid pro quo and the nomination limit? Within each category there could be 2 sections. The top section would still be listed oldest to newest but would only be from nominators who (a) have as many reviews as nominations and (b) have no more than X active nominations. The bottom section would be the remainder of nominations listed from oldest to newest.Rjjiii (talk) 00:58, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I think our biggest issue at GAN is people nominating but not reviewing. I'm happy if someone reviews 10 articles in a row to put up 8 articles for review. If everyone did that, we'd have no backlog. I don't think limiting people to HAVE to review will work, but a softer rule around your noms being more hidden if there is a lack of review is good to me. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:23, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Per all the prior discussions about this on WT:GAN. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 07:28, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support (t · c) buidhe 07:42, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I just made (a few days late, as I didn't read this before) a similar but slightly more complicated suggestion to Rjjiii's (see discussion of Proposal 6 above). Hiding noms looks like a good compromise to me. —Kusma (talk) 15:55, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Prioritisation of those who give back to the community is a good idea. Should the nomination date also be removed? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:50, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support seems reasonable Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 21:30, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support BUT I feel like having both options to sort by reviews and chronological order is the best option. I also don't favour on removing the date when the article was nominated. It just doesn't feel right for a GAN to sit in the queue for possibly a year just because reviewers don't like the article, feel intimidated to review it, or because the nominator doesn't review often. Reviewing old nominations to me seems like a way of showing respect for the nominator's patience. I agree with prioritizing frequently reviewers and that is clear as day, but we also need to keep in mind that frequent nominators contribute to the project as well. Sparkl^talk 00:12, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To have both sort options available would require a table format, which is certainly possible, but would take longer to implement. A change to the sort order, using the current format, could be done very easily. I would prefer to switch to a table format myself, to allow reviewers to sort as they see fit, but that's a bigger change and I would rather not wait for that to try this idea. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:15, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Makes sense to me. In the absence of awarding GA Reviewers some type of ongoing badges, at least give them some type of recognition. Hey, as long as we're at it, why don't GA Reviewers get some sort of Service Award, like the awards for the number of edits? Shearonink (talk) 05:41, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. We could also change the top red box to include the top five GAs not just by pure longevity but also those by first-time nominators (which generally get increased priority under the sorting at User:ChristieBot/SortableGANoms). This would also help retention and engagement by encouraging users to look through the contributions of new nominators and reduce wait times. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 06:03, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like that idea. That box is written by WugBot, so courtesy ping to Wugapodes; if we were to implement this ChristieBot could take over writing that page if it depends on data WugBot doesn't have. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:46, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Sammi Brie and Mike Christie: That sounds like a fine idea. If what's being proposed is to add a section to the red box (Wikipedia:Good article nominations/backlog) for oldest nominations by new nominators, then ChristieBot can implement that without interfering with WugBot. The box is at Wikipedia:Good article nominations/backlog and is formatted as a table. The actual entries are transcluded from Wikipedia:Good article nominations/backlog/items which is what WugBot actually edits. So we can just add another row to the table and transclude a second page handled by ChristieBot; no need to coordinate a transition or reinvent the wheel. I set up an example in this edit with the second item list at Wikipedia:Good article nominations/backlog/new noms though the name of that page can be changed to whatever you want. — Wug·a·po·des 20:46, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks -- that should be easy enough to implement. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:55, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I support this particular idea! Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 22:49, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I don't think this would have the intended effect (of theoretically rewarding high-ratio reviewers as some reviewers will take what's at the top of the list) but I think the fundamental idea of promoting certain reviews has merit. Per above, if there were breakouts (top five articles) of, for example, GAN's articles with the highest annual viewership, most # of language links (high translation potential), WP:VITAL-rated, oldest (days nominated), shortest and longest (character count), I think that would give reviewers more options for choosing something that piques their interest. Similarly, can breakout selections of articles by high-review-ratio reviewers, by first-time nominators, by nominators who have 80%+ authorship, by nominators who need a second opinion—all of this variety breeds interest. Combine that with adding short descriptions to the GAN list (with something like {{laal}}) and the GAN list becomes much more enticing to reviewers and much more so than simply putting high-review ratio reviewers at top, although no qualms about putting a high-review-ratio reviewer breakout first atop all other breakouts. czar 23:30, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GAN is the most common entrypoint for reviewers and I'd expect a sortable table view proposed above to be more cumbersome. My recommendation is to offer multiple views of WP:GAN along what I suggested above so that reviewers have more options to help select their next review. This is better than tweaking WP:GAN to suit all audiences. czar 01:23, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I agree with Sammi's proposal that first-time nominators should be prioritized as well. However, I think this idea would encourage editors to conduct more reviews without bogging them down with the formalities of a QPQ-style review (which could go awry in too many ways). – Epicgenius (talk) 00:02, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I never explicitly said it but I support the proposal, and Sammi's idea sounds great. I too see several advantages of this plan over QPQ or similar plans. QPQ, the nomination limit, or another hard limit will inevitably obscure some portion of the backlog. Because those proposals would push nominations into a bunch of private personal waiting areas, they would kind of paradoxically mean that it takes even longer for a nomination to get reviewed. Mike Christie's proposal, Sammi's box idea, and Mike Christie's table comment all sound like plans that will get the benefits of QPQ but will make nominations easier to access.

Also, I think this plan is the "carrot" trying to lure a nominator to review but QPQ is the stick punishing nominators for not reviewing. I have doubts about the quality of forced reviews. Rjjiii (talk) 05:10, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional Support, as long as we don't treat having NO GAs as equivalent to an infinite priority, i.e. new nominators should not go straight to the top of the list (that sounds like a divide-by-zero error to me). Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's how I had planned to implement it, and I don't see a real problem with it -- any nominator can only have no GAs once, after all. Where in the list would you put a nomination from a nominator who had reviewed five articles and had no GAs, after all? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:26, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm having another thought about this proposal. Right now, ChristieBot will drop a talk page message when an article passes/fails. Could the bot drop a talk page message the first time an editor nominates a GA, briefly explaining the benefits of reviewing an article per this proposal, inviting the nominator to check out the nominations, and encouraging new reviewers? Something just long enough to let new nominators know (a) their nomination is now in the list and (b) it will move up the list if they review a GAN. Rjjiii (talk) 06:36, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Rjjiii it might be worth making a new proposal for that so people will see it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:40, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: There would need to be a way to make sure that it doesn't punish users that are new to GA. If there's a user that has one or two successful nominations and zero reviews, then a system like this could suppress that user's nominations, even if they haven't yet developed the skills to review. Then it would take even longer for the user to get comfortable enough with the process to start reviewing. New users are the people that we should be supporting the most. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:46, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this would be as big an issue as it sounds. Many reviewers don't pay attention to the current sort order anyway; they just pick an article that interests them. Some reviewers will probably still work from the backlog box at the top which will still contain the oldest nominations. Having said that, if we try this and see some nominations from nominators with one GA and no reviews languishing for a long time, we could try ways to move them up the list. But I think in many cases one GA is all most experienced editors would need to be able to try to do a review. Inexperienced editors often should not be nominating. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:58, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I think this is a reasonable way to incentivize reviewing without there being a hard-and-fast requirement (as appears was rejected earlier). Lord Roem ~ (talk) 01:30, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I don't oppose this exactly, as in the end I'm not sure the order particularly matters, but there seem to be a couple of potential downsides. For new participants, getting one or two GAs in but not feeling ready to review would keep your right down at the bottom of the list. More widely, since this would sort by username, I am concerned a cluster of noms from a single person may make newer reviewers averse, as it creates a perception of deep involvement which can be intimidating. CMD (talk) 01:34, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support with the caveat that first-time nominators should be prioritized above frequent reviewers. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:16, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, and support Ganesha's suggestion as well: this is a really smart idea. I think it would also give us the opportunity to give newer submitters a little boost. In regards to it not having much of an effect -- it would certainly be possible to ignore the sort order if you didn't care at all. But I think this is part of the appeal, at least to me. There are basically three scenarios I see: you don't care about which nominations are at the top of the list and just want to review something (in which case you will help the system out), you actively want to encourage reviews (in which case you help the system out), or you don't use the sort order at all (in which case you don't help this system out, but you don't hurt it, and it doesn't hurt you either). jp×g 08:57, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support; not going to pretend like this doesn't benefit me strongly, but I do also agree with the idea in principle. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:07, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 10: Reduce peer review expectation

General consensus against this proposal, some leaning towards that the proposal in its current state is just unfeasible. Result: not passed. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 03:54, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

There is an social expectation, enforced by some editors but absent from the GA criteria, that reviewers provide an extended, written peer review to accompany the standard assessment against the GA criteria. We should codify in the GA criteria that there is no such requirement. This will return GAN to being a simple checklist assessment against the criteria with written text only as needed to justify the assessment. czar 04:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My personal thoughts: It is a wonderful gift to receive a peer review, but they are wasted on GAs and altogether aren't part of the criteria. The GA review is like a driver's test: It assesses whether some minimal acceptable standard ("decency") is met, not whether someone is a "good" driver. Extended text in a GA review, while often nice, is often conflated as a list of things needed to reach the GA criteria when they are often just friendly, optional notes to improve the article. Clarifying that the written review is separate (or optional) from the criteria assessment will undo the commitment escalation, remove the burden from the GA reviewer, and make the GAN process more accessible. czar 04:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Of all the suggestions at this drive, I think this has the greatest potential to encourage reviewing and reduce the backlog. GA was always intended to be a lightweight process, distinct from the exacting criteria and thorough reviewing at FAC, but over time, we've evolved into a sort of FA-lite. Making it clear that the priority is adherence to the GA criteria - and that lengthy written commentary is optional - could be a good way to decrease the anxiety of new reviewers and encourage them to join in. It might also encourage existing people with high nom-to-review ratios to do more reviews. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:10, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support My only concern is that what is and is not criteria can get muddled at times. Criteria 1a and 1b require that the page be well written but do suggestions that make sentences more readable count as a peer review or GA criteria? Etrius ( Us) 22:25, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that this issue may be helped by proposals above relating to identifying example reviews and pre-loading a template into GANs. CMD (talk) 02:24, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support in principle, but curious to know how this would be accomplished. We did this somewhat after this discussion (it is a great example of how a thread that looks like it is going off the rails can be resurrected to a useful change). Personally I don't want to discourage editors who give detailed feedback. If I have read an article and notice something that I think can improve it I want to mention that and I certainly appreciate it when I get similar feedback back in turn. We say pretty prominently that this is not required and no one should begrudge a reviewer that sticks solely to the criteria. Aircorn (talk) 08:57, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Like Aircorn I think this is a good idea but I don't know how it could be done effectively. I don't want to discourage suggestions that improve the article, but I think sometimes reviewers ask for more improvements in the prose than are strictly called for by 1a: "clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct". I've passed articles that I thought had weak prose, and seen later editors come along and copyedit them with comments like "Who passed this for GA? The prose is terrible". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:24, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd rather receive a peer review GA slowly than a quick ticks-all-boxes pass that does not engage with the content at all. This suggestion makes GA reviews less useful to the nominator, which I think is a bad thing. —Kusma (talk) 14:54, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose It's a bit of a risk to do this while peer review is as slow as it is, and especially when we're considering initiatives that formalise the GA process. At the moment, GA is the main place where you can come for FAC preparation; if you go to PR, you have to be willing to wait a third of a year. I actually think it would be a good idea to incorporate the slowly-dying PR into the GA process, perhaps as an optional second step of the nomination. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:55, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This presumes that GA is a FAC preparation stage, but it's explicitly intended to be a separate process. Certainly, people use it as an FA staging area (myself included), but that's actually not at all what the GACR are intended to be. I find the idea of merging PR - which is largely moribund - with GA somewhat interesting, but it would require a substantial revision of GA as it currently stands. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I know what it's intended to be, but what I'm trying to say is that it's risky to prescribe what it should be, when what it actually is in reality is much more helpful. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:35, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In what way is it "risky"? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:39, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That people trying to prepare for FA noninations will have a rather important step taken away from them. Sure, you might get a very cursiry review at GAN, but even that's better than no review for three months at PR. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:43, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I recognize the value of getting a thorough pre-FAC-review, but GA is not part of the FAC process. It's a separate process with its own criteria. If we want to make FAC prep an explicit part of the GA process, we need to change how GA works.
Personally, I think Czar is on to something with the suggestion that thorough peer review at GA should explicitly be optional. Perhaps a peer review/FAC prep/whatever parameter could be added in the GA nom template so the nom can flag whether or not they need that kind of review, and anyone who doesn't intend to seek FAC can decline. This parameter could be another useful sort parameter for the sorting overhaul being discussed at proposal 9. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:20, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Premeditated Chaos can you make a Proposal 10a? I would support this detailed addendum. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 03:33, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, see below. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:18, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose there is no "peer review expectation", however, in my opinion the purpose of the GA process is ultimately to drive article improvement and discouraging detailed feedback would detract from that. (t · c) buidhe 05:13, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The expectation of "detailed feedback" you support is itself the "peer review" expectation under discussion. And the proposal is not to ban/discourage it but to acknowledge that there is no implicit requirement and not ostracize reviewers who choose not to do it. czar 06:38, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Peer review is one of the greatest strengths of the GA process

Xx78900 (talk) 12:51, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Ensuring that people understand they don't need to write essays is fine, but codifying the idea that people should (as people will take the rules as the standard expectation) mostly/only review with ticks and boxes would result in more low quality or sub-standard reviews. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 20:23, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 10a: Set peer review to optional

Near unanimous opposition, Result: not passed. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:35, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Detailed peer review at GA should explicitly be optional, determined by the nominator's wishes. A peer review/FAC prep/whatever parameter should be added in the {{GAN}} template so the nominator can flag whether or not they're looking for that style of review. This parameter could also be another useful sort parameter for the sorting overhaul being discussed at proposal 9. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:18, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I am firmly of the view that some form of in-depth review should be maintained, because what the GA process was originally meant to achieve and what it now functions as are completely different. If consensus is for a return to the former, then I support this as a recognition of the latter. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:07, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly Support. This removes the guesswork of what a nom wants out of their GA and saves the reviewer/nom both a headache. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 12:13, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose It should be up to the reviewer how they want to conduct the review. It already is optional if the nominator wants to respond to any non-GA comments, but we should maintain the flexibility of the process as much as possible. Aircorn (talk) 15:49, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, this is not a binary issue. A review can be quite detailed without doing much FAC preparation, and any review should show that the reviewer is engaging with the content and sourcing (otherwise you can't possibly assess broadness, focus and neutrality). It is probably a good idea to be clearer about whether issues brought up by the reviewer are optional ideas or potential points of failure. —Kusma (talk) 20:09, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the review style should always be at the discretion of the reviewer. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:05, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, same reason. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:24, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I would personally be suspicious of a review which did not have at least some commentary to go with it. Commentary akin to a peer review proves that the reviewer has actually read the article and thought about it. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 20:34, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, the review style is up to the reviewer, as others have said above. The requirement is that the review shows that the GACR are met. CMD (talk) 08:06, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The reviewer shouldn’t be forced to conduct a review in a restricted way in my opinion. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 18:46, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 11: Ban drive-by nominations

There appears to be consensus that this should be implemented. Proposal has passed 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 03:40, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Drive by nominations are currently allowed, but discouraged, by the rules: "Articles may be nominated by anyone, though it is highly preferable that they have contributed significantly to the article and are familiar with the subject." Change this to something like, "Articles may be nominated by anyone who has significantly contributed to the article. Drive-by nominations are not allowed." I think this actually fits practice better: many drive by nominations are just reverted by those of us who maintain the page; other drive by nominations, however, can use up reviewer time. Changing the policy to explicitly forbid them will discourage such nominations or at least make it a bit easier to quickly revert them. (t · c) buidhe 09:50, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The only issue with this is how do you define significant coverage? If an article is very well written, but the contributors have all left Wikipedia, or have no interest in promoting to GA, then the articles will always sit there. Those are the cases I'm happy with a "drive-by"? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:12, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a better metric would be familiarity with the article's sources? That's certainly not as easy to measure but essentially the difference between a drive-by nomination and a valid one. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 11:56, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question What would be the correct way to nominate such drive-by nominations? I would prefer a CSD like WP:G6 which would keep contribution history clean. Since we don't want to mark an article has having undergone multiple GAN if it didn't beyond a technicality. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:18, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just revert the talkpage template. CMD (talk) 01:19, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, although perhaps without the explicit negative "not allowed" sentence. I have seen to my memory one case of a successful "drive-by" promotion (and that was to FA not GA), which was the work of an editor who made very high quality articles. Such rare cases fit easily into IAR. CMD (talk) 16:29, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support to Lee Vilenski's concern: in that particular case, significant contributions could be recognised from the addition of illustrations and captioning, editorial work, ~~basic~~ substantial copy-editing, reference work etc. But for the sake of argument, let us assume that there is a perfectly ready article, copy-edited, well-illustrated, properly referenced ... and the editor who had brought it to that stage had just departed this mortail coil... well, it would not be a drive-by nomination, it would be a nomination in recognition of that editor's work. I see this particular circumstance as less as an IAR issue, but more as someone identifying another editor's work and looking to have it recognised. There's no reason why a "reasonable grounds/GF drive-by" exception can't be implicit (and there really cannot be many situations where this will actually need to happen). Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 20:01, 4 January 2023 (UTC) Comment amended: I had not meant basic in a quantitative sense, but qualitative, however, that perhaps was not clear. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 20:43, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We don't generally consider a copyedit to be enough for "substantial", but if we did treat it as such, I'd have no issues with this. It would give us an easy quickfail criteria, and could even code a bot to say when an editor has less than... Say 10 edits to a page. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:24, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

An editor with nine edits could be an article's sole author. —Kusma (talk) 15:48, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, although Bilorv's minimalist challenge suggests that is something of a rarity :P Come to think of it, the authorship percentage calculated by XTools could be substituted for edit count. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 16:26, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, the level can be changed - say less than 10 edits and also less than 20% authorship. I think any less than that isn't substantial at all. 10 edits isn't very much, but I get some editors might write an article in one edit. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:58, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lee - personally I think 10 edits is a very reasonable floor, which is why I was pointing out the rarity of getting a GA at under that :) What do you think about my suggestion below to have a drive-by section on the GAN report? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:43, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Minimalist has been the Challenge with the most winners, which was not what I would have predicted initially. I think it shows I'm not so unique in my writing process (often doing all the work in one long session, not clicking "Submit" on the unreadable mess until it's fully formed). — Bilorv (talk) 00:04, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support When an editor can actually bring an article they haven't contributed much to up to GA standard, that editor is probably very experienced. They can simply leave a note: "I am not a major contributor to the article, but I have reviewed its sourcing/writing and will respond actively during the GAN process." Who to discourage is newcomers who, not knowing how GA works, just nominate a sprawling article like Human without contributing much. Ovinus (talk) 03:07, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Are drive-by newcomer nominations actually a serious issue? I wouldn't have thought this is a big part of the backlog, as it produces quickfails that are, well, quick to perform, as well as easy to identify. — Bilorv (talk) 00:05, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know that it's a huge part of the backlog per se, but we seem to get a lot of questions about such noms at WT:GAN (there was one yesterday). Explicitly disallowing them would probably save people some time asking and responding. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:09, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And save the fledgling nominator some embarrassment. Ovinus (talk) 04:02, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps a section for possible drive-by nominations could be added to Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Report? Anything where the nom has <X edits to the article gets listed there, and then people can remove them if they confirm it is a true drive-by and not one of the possible edge cases noted above. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 16:37, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's already a similar rule in WP:GAN/I#N1: Nominators who are not significant contributors to the article must consult regular editors of the article on the article talk page prior to a nomination. But it's kinda buried, so stating it in the lead section of that page might be a good idea. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 19:57, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is how things get buried. If anything we should be simplifying the instructions. Aircorn (talk) 15:56, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support It should be noted that, per the FAQ "Drive-by" nominations, which are permitted. So that'll need to be updated as well. I've noticed that vital articles tend to be drive-by nomed the most. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 04:05, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support but I'd go a step deeper. What's important isn't "not drive-by" but that we actually want nominators to do work to vet the article in advance. To combine with other proposals above and if bright lines are needed, we could ask that a nominator has either contributed 15% authorship or done a pre-review on the talk page (performs a full copy edit, addresses the criteria, speaks to the source spot checking of controversial statements, etc.) explaining how the article is ready. The latter has the added benefit of letting the article's stewards know that they're considering GAN. I don't think it necessarily needs to be this prescriptive but I am considering how we might solve multiple problems at once. czar 23:14, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This seems intuitive - nominators who haven't contributed much to an article would most likely not be able to adequately address a reviewer's comments. There might be a situation in which the original article is nearly GA-ready, but the largest contributor is no longer editing Wikipedia. An exception to this rule can probably be made for such a scenario. However, situations like this, where the article is far from ready for a good article review, seem to be much more common. – Epicgenius (talk) 00:09, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't mind a requirement like Czar or Ovinus are expressing, where any sign that a nominator intends to take the review process seriously gets a pass. Hard limits on number of edits, percentage authorship or strict interpretations of "drive-by" are a no from me. Serious assessment that an article is ready for GA can take many forms, including the rare-but-genuine stumbling across an excellent-quality article that is ready for the process and nominating it (or nominating on a newcomer author's behalf). — Bilorv (talk) 00:10, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Bilorv & Epicgenius, how would you guys feel about a system where possible drive-by noms were bot-listed at the GAN report? Humans would then either clear them as fine or remove the nomination if they are indeed drive-bys. There would have to be baseline criteria that led to the initial bot listing, but editors checking the GAN report would have complete leeway to clear them as not a drive-by. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:20, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Epicgenius, sorry biffed the first ping. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:21, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I'd support this—anything involving human intervention is automatically fine by me. This would just be using automation to aid existing practice, which is to remove GANs that are going to waste a lot of time for no benefit. I don't think I've ever drive-by nominated, but let's say I did: either the person monitoring the bot report goes "ah, a prolific GA nominator, so will respond to reviewer comments" or they remove my listing and I have someone to ~~yell at~~ politely request reinstate the nomination as I do intend to take the review seriously. — Bilorv (talk) 00:27, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds fine to me too. Having someone manually review possible drive-by noms would spare both the reviewer, who would be wasting time on an article that the nominator doesn't plan to work on, and the nominator, who could be discouraged by a quick-fail. I know that, as a new editor a decade ago, I made a couple of drive-by nominations; I really didn't understand what the GA criteria were at the time, and a message on my talk page discouraging drive-by noms would have been better than the series of quick-fail messages I received.
(By the way, @Premeditated Chaos, I actually got both of your pings.) – Epicgenius (talk) 00:39, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Bilorv, that's an interesting thought - the GAN report could note the number of GAs just like the main page does, in addition to edits to page and/or authorship. So an entry at the drive-by section might look like "Cheese - Jan 6, 2023, Premeditated Chaos (3 edits to page, 2% authorship, 18 GAs)", which provides some indication that I'm a serious nominator, without the person looking necessarily having to know me by name.

Epic, sorry to spam you. We could create a friendly little template to go along with the decline - like "hey this isn't a failure but you did a drive-by, here's why we don't do those, blah blah". ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:52, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
3 edits to page, 2% authorship, 18 GAs I would love this on the GAN page itself, whether by default or supplemented by user script. This metadata makes otherwise drab listings way more appetizing (I'd add the short description too and shorter {{laal}} listing per my comment in Prop 9), which is important if that page is the main discovery surface for new reviews.

I would be prepared, however, for noms with 3 edits to page, 2% authorship, 18 GAs to languish—I don't think that's bound to change. czar 06:51, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"rare-but-genuine" occurrences can be IARed. I'm pretty sure if any experienced editor came to the talkpage and said "I want to nominate this clearly good article" for example, that they would not be refused. CMD (talk) 01:24, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think a bot is a good idea, it would help reduce the faff of checking nominations to determine whether they are drive-by or not. And a template to politely chastise drive-by nominators would also be useful. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 18:52, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Oppose any hard numbers for disqualification, but support some form of way to easily identify articles nominated that are potentially drive-by. Aircorn (talk) 15:59, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I've never seen a review pass with a drive-by nomination. These nominations waste the time of reviewers and increase the scale of the backlog. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 20:25, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I've seen many drive-by nominations get reverted, despite them being allowed. With that in mind, I'd rather DBNs be outright prohibited than discouraged. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 15:24, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, unfortunately they're nothing but trouble; *some* knowledge of and interest in the article is needed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:25, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment it seems like this proposal, or something very much like it, was unaminously approved at the last proposal drive a decade ago. I wonder what happened in the intervening time. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:15, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's like a lot of these ideas here. They are good in theory, but hard to implement practically. For example look at Science that is currently up for review. Would you considered that to be a drive-by nomination? (Note they have left a message on the talk page). We could, and generally do, revert obvious ones if we come across them. They are usually articles that are a long way from GA status. Hard numbers don't work due to many different editing styles and the fact that some articles are already in near good article shape. We could add something to the quick-fail criteria about drive-by noms and leave it up to the reviewer to decide, but I am not sure how else to do it. Aircorn (talk) 05:16, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support the concept, in this case it might be good to mirror FAC. --Rs chen 7754 03:23, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Problems will always arise in the review and the nominator must be knowledgeable to resolve them. Schierbecker (talk) 07:15, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I am actually very surprised that anyone could nominate a good article without making some contributions. This seems like it would become a common sense fix. Jorahm (talk) 18:32, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I haven't yet seen a drive-by nomination which resulted in an article passing GA. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:17, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 12: Add open GAR listings to GAN page

Overall, the proposal has a good amount of support. In particular, the inclusion of community GARs seems to be particularly popular. Proposal passes. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 02:43, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Open GAR pages would be much easier to find and might get more attention if the GAR listings were on the same page as the GANs. The topic parameter of the GA template would allow the GARs to be listed in the same section as the GANs for that topic. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:10, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support - but maybe only do community GARs, which require input. Individual GARs are usually quite straightforward / would often meet quick-fail criteria. It may be a waste of community time to give them more prominence. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 15:25, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Having thought about this a bit more, I'm a bit concerned about this if we ever do a much-needed GA sweeps. It will be demoralizing to have half of the entries being GARs. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:42, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  If it ever winds up being an issue, it would be simple enough to stick them back on a side page, either permanently or temporarily. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:50, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Fair enough :). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:03, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support for community GARs only, per Femke. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:50, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Could they be given their own section within the various sub-categories? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 20:27, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes -- since they are GAs, they have a GA template on the talk page. That template has a topic parameter, so the bot can figure out which section and subsection they belong to. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:39, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support for community GARs, and actually, I think individual GARs should be there as well. (Frankly I think having a split process provides little utility and just makes the process more confusing - but that's another discussion). For example, I recently opened a GAR at Talk:Lightning Bolt (band)/GA1. It's a low-traffic article to begin with, the nominator is long inactive, and the applicable WikiProjects I posted to are basically moribund. It's been five days with no input and only 4 pageviews, and I am confident that even if I let it remain open for a month, no one would bother to weigh in. Same thing happened with the last individual GAR I did, and I think lack of visibility plays a big part. No one can possibly weigh in if they don't know the review even exists. If individual GARs were listed on the GAN page, that would sharply increase the possibility of an outside editor stepping up. Even if no one else commented, I would feel more comfortable with delisting articles if I knew there was a silent consensus of no one actively disagreeing. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:06, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Biggest issue at GAR is that there isn't enough people - I think it is because people think the process is altogether different from GA. Combining the lists would make them easier to see and action. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:07, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support: increasing visibility to GAR would be good. — Bilorv (talk) 10:48, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to see a mockup first; I am a bit concerned this will make the effects of the backlog (super long page, hard to find anything you're interested in) worse. —Kusma (talk) 11:33, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But generally, increasing GAR's visibility is something that needs doing. I tend to forget that it exists. —Kusma (talk) 14:41, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is promising as it could increase traffic, but I don't feel that GAR is that hidden away that this will solve the issue. Definitely only do community reassessments as individual ones generally aren't crying out for extra attention like community reassessment. Aircorn (talk) 04:46, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand why we would not want individual GARs to get attention. Right now, they're not listed anywhere, and are basically invisible to everyone except the original nominator unless they happen to be on an active WikiProject or the watchlist of an interested editor (unlikely prospects in my experience). That means there's almost no chance for anyone to notice to the GAR and rescue the article - surely a more desirable outcome than a delist. Of course not every article will find a white knight, but anything that increases the chance of that happening seems to be a clear positive in my eyes. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 13:48, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is this a good time to question whether having individual reassessments at all is useful? Is there any harm in having every reassessment be put to the community at large? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 14:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I was thinking about creating a proposal for combining and streamlining the GAR process, and it might work well with the GAR coordinator role being discussed below. Something like this: All GARs are centrally listed, with anyone free to weigh in. A GAR can be closed after a week by the editor who opened it, unless someone objects to the delist. At that point participants are expected to discuss and come to a consensus about whether the issues are resolved or not. If a clear consensus develops from that, the opener can close the GAR on their own recognizance. If things get contentious, an uninvolved editor or the GAR coords (if that gets consensus) can step in and determine consensus. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:29, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would be in favour of that, although the exact role of any "GAR coord" is still very much up for discussion. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 14:39, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, for sure, and the proposal isn't contingent on it passing, just that it could be easily worked in if it did. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:16, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

They can be found at Category:Good article reassessment nominees. If the reassessor follows the instructions correctly then Wikiprojects and editors should be notified that the reassessment is open (automating that like AFD would be neat). The main use of the category is finding the old ones that editors have opened and then forgot about. Aircorn (talk) 15:50, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If we're having to explain to ourselves exactly how the GAR system works and how to even find parts of it then it clearly isn't suitable in current form, imo. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 16:25, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Aircorn, as I said in my comments above, most WikiProjects are moribund, and many nominators of old articles are now inactive for various reasons. If the page isn't on the watchlist of someone who notices the diff where it gets GAR'd (vanishingly unlikely in my experience), it may as well be invisible. Using only a category to manage a process like this is downright stupid, as it leaves no central record of the GARs once the template is removed from the article talk page. It's also not browsable and that's annoying - you have to open each one individually. In comparison, while processes like AfD and DYK use categories to supplement organization, all AfDs and DYKs are centrally placed on one page that can be browsed and whose history can be looked at. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:21, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It was all we had. Don't get me wrong I have said for a long time that the community GAR process is broken. I am coming around to your proposal (not that I had to with the level of support it is getting). Individually I don't like the GAR reform proposals, but together I think we have got something that might just work. Aircorn (talk) 04:55, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support let's unify it. The whole GA ecosystem already has too many pages and relatively too few volunteers as is. Bringing more attention/centralized overview is a good thing. If GARs become so numerous, we can discuss separating it out after. GAR and GAN are two sides of the same coin, with goal of either improving articles (and or icon collecting) ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:05, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A note to say that when I proposed this I meant it to include individual GARs, and per a couple of the comments above I still think that's a good idea. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:33, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, GANs and GARs in practice are quite different. GANs see a whole review of the article, whereas GARs usually start from identifying a few problems and then either fixing them or nothing happening (assuming the basis for the GAR is valid at all; you can have drive-by GARs just as easily as drive-by GANs!) instead of a full assessment of the GACR. Both also require the opposite sort of attention: GANs require a reviewer to pick them up, GARs require a content creator to pick them up. Putting them on the same page may mix expectations, especially for those unfamiliar with the GAN and GAR processes. Listing them in the same sections, as proposed, would make such confusion even worse. CMD (talk) 01:28, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose sort of. I have though about the proposed rejig of the GAR process and am fully on board with the proposals further down. As such I think it would be better keeping them separate. If there is a way to do that on the main page that works that is fine, but with upwards of 500 GANs plus 50 GARs I feel it will just clog the system even more. AS CMD rightly points out there is a difference between GAN and GAR reviews and this needs to be explained, which will just add more instructions to the GAN page, and create more confusion with editors. Again if there is a way to do this on one page I might change my mind, but I feel strongly there needs to be a distinction between GAN and GAR. Aircorn (talk) 06:45, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The processes are pretty different, and community GARs can potentially take up a lot of space compared to very space-efficient nominations. Spreading GARs out by topic also seems unwieldly. At most, maybe stick a prominent link to GAR at the end of the GAN page? That's sufficient, though. SnowFire (talk) 09:14, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per SnowFire. It would clutter up the space, which is meant to be a friendly entry-level page. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Lee Vilenski. Ajpolino (talk) 18:16, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, GAR needs more visibility and organizing by topic would make it easier to find a GAR of interest. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 06:26, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 12a: Downsize the role of GAR

Proposal did not obtain any support, and alternative changes to the GAR process have been decided by Proposals 13 and 14. Result: not passed. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:55, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Part of what makes GAR a cumbersome, months-long endeavor is that it attempts to copy the GA model of addressing problems as they are pointed out – but often times, the original GA nominator isn't around to be the point person and fix all of the issues that come up. To that end, GAR should just stick to reviewing, and not to attempting to fix major flaws in the article. GARs should be limited to two weeks; the result can either be to keep the article, to delist the article, or send it back to GA for a full review if someone (who isn't the GAR nominator) volunteers to field it through the GA process. One nice benefit about this is that if someone volunteers to take it through, they can get a GA credit for their troubles. It also consolidates the two backlogs where appropriate. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 08:57, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support as proposer, I think it'd be a good opportunity to bring GAR under a reasonable time frame. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:16, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. GAR does not attract enough traffic to ensure sufficient feedback is reached in two weeks. If sufficient consensus is reached, GARs can already be closed in a week, or even faster; the problem is not that we have GARs with a clear consensus of several !voters all saying the same thing yet the discussion remaining unclosed, but rather only one or two people chiming in, sometimes hesitantly. The only fix for that is more people to closely examine the article and chip in. Adding an arbitrary time limit merely gives closers a supervote. Additionally, the model for GAR should be FAR, where the ideal goal is the restoration of the article to its current status. If someone does decide to try "fixing" a GA under review, that can often take more than two weeks, and should be encouraged rather than discouraged - GARs should not be about "just reviewing." Imagine if the same standard was applied to GAN - if a GA nomination isn't taken up within two weeks, or a GA review back-and-forth takes longer than two weeks, it's quick-failed? That would clearly be silly, and I think such a standard for GAR would also be incorrect. SnowFire (talk) 09:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- To go into this into some more detail: there are two real problems that come up at GAR that will be exacerbated by such a change that prioritizes speed over accuracy. In one, there are "bad" GAR nominations where someone accuses an article of being inaccurate, incomplete, or not hewing to the sources, but they're wrong / biased / just don't like it/ etc. In another, there's articles that look good but are in fact deeply biased, so even if they cite the sources and are formatted correctly, they are in fact concealing a deep-seated problem: the article is slanted, inaccurate, incomplete, and so on. But distinguishing between these two cases is not obvious. Doing so requires editors willing to take a close look. If such a revamped, speedy GAR process starts stripping GA status eagerly without a close look, it will let POV-pushers easily strip GA status from articles they dislike merely because the original editor is retired; if such a revamped, speedy GAR process generally closes against nominators, then it will allow problematic GAs to fester without a long-form way to investigate the article and come to a consensus. Neither of these are good. I get that it's frustrating GAR is slow, but that can't just be wished away with a time limit - it needs to be fixed with more reviewers. If more reviewers come to GAR - and good reviewers - the slowness will fix itself in easy cases, and the hard cases will be ones we wanted more time anyway. SnowFire (talk) 09:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  @SnowFire: I'd be willing to cede on the time limit, that's fine – but I think there's still an inherent advantage to saying "okay, if the problems are starting to pile up, instead of wasting editor-hours awkwardly trying to fix stuff as people are pointing them out, let's delist and someone can take it back to GA with this as a guide". Like, the Russia GAR was a whole mess because of how much time was wasted salvaging sub-GA work in fits and starts. Why have two separate process for doing the same thing: putting articles that may or may not be up to standards against the GA criteria? The worst thing that happens in case of a bad delist isn't a deletion, or even a prejudice against renomination – it's just an invitation to resubmit at GA and carefully work through the problems with a reviewer, one-on-one. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 10:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  
  I mean, if GAR doesn't have a good amount of traffic, I think we should be putting the workload where we have the resources. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 10:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  IMO GAR currently has minimal traffic because of its low visibility and the unnecessary complexity of the process. I think the streamlined process with central listing from proposal 14 and the potential for listing GARs at GAN from proposal 12 will increase participation by removing or reducing those barriers.
  
  There's also a social reluctance to decisively delist bad articles, just as there is a social reluctance to decisively fail GANs that aren't hitting the criteria. It feels bad to be the person saying "your work isn't good enough", especially with the current system of basically shouting into a void for individual GARs. With big articles like Russia it's even worse - it feels like a big responsibility, there's the potential of inviting trouble from people who disagree with your decision, etc. I think the increased visibility from the streamlined process will improve that as there's a greater potential for others to weigh in, taking some of the social responsibility away from the lone person proposing the GAR (even knowing there's a silent consensus is reassuring). If the GAR coords proposal passes, we will have coords with the social capital/authority/what-have-you to decisively close those big bad GARs like Russia or railway surgery, allowing regular users to focus on less contentious GARs. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:37, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - On kicking something back to a new GAN: Sure, if problems are detected, that can be a good solution, and I've advocated for that myself in some GARs for a "take some time, revise, and visit GAN again". But if it's not clear there really are problems, I suspect many editors would be quite displeased with the article having the GA status stripped and told to renominate again, so it's not a trivial "worst case." And that's the whole rub - are there actually "problems" to "carefully work through with a reviewer?" Because there are some radioactively controversial topics where there will always be some editors unhappy with the article, and other articles that get good-faith but confused / weak rationales against them. I'm just saying that's GAR's whole reason for existence - to figure out if those problems are real, and that's the most important thing to make sure works and is given sufficient time. SnowFire (talk) 10:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I feel like this is fairly similar to PMC's Proposal 14 below, which has passed. Certainly delisting GAs shouldn't be that tiresome, and I think it's unreasonable to expect reviewers to be able to fix every article that comes to GAR, if they lack the necessary resources or subject knowledge. With P14 and others implemented, however, I don't think GAR will be as slow as it currently is anyway.~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:24, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, I agree with SnowFire that this hits the wrong area. GAR is not usually a months long endeavour, more typically it is a five minute endeavour that simply hangs around for a few months. (Currently the situation is different, as we have a few dedicated people going through older articles, but this is unrepresentative of the usual activity.) We actually need more endeavour than the five minutes, GARs should come with a reasonable list of problems including at least a couple of specifics. FAR for example requires a talkpage post before the FAR is opened, and we shouldn't require that bureaucracy, but many GARs don't even mention the GACR. If that initial effort is put in, it is much easier to see the problems, and much easier to assess if they are being actioned. CMD (talk) 13:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's unclear to me what this proposal is specifically assessing. It seems the above commenters have rejected the idea of reducing the gestation time, so I'm going to ignore that provision (point is also moot considering Prop 14 passing). The idea that GAR could become more of an up/down vote by acclamation rather than a workshop, and generally seeking to delist and renominate rather than let a GAR languish, I can get behind but it needs firmer parameters. I.e., when there is disagreement during a GAR and a participant is asking for time to fix the article (put "on hold"), what is the desired course of events? Realistically I think the existing proposals will cover the need here. Anything uncontroversial will close fast with Prop 14 and anything that drags out should be closed after some set period with Prop 13's coordinator. czar 05:04, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 13: Coordinators for Good article reassessment

Strong support for proposal as long as the role is strictly for moving along GA reviews. passed 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 05:35, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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I'd like to hear other's thoughts on implementation, but I'd support this in principle. No guarantees I'll sign up as a coord if this passes though. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:43, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
An accurate depiction of TAOT trying to no longer be a coordinator 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 03:54, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
🗿 Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What would a co-ordinator do that a regular editor can't? If we can't get regular editors involved, what is the going to attract editors to become co-ordinators? There is nothing stopping any editor who knows the criteria getting involved in closing reassessments. Aircorn (talk) 04:40, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This would mean other editors could not close GARs, which does not seem a positive step. CMD (talk) 04:51, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't foresee this being akin to the FAC coordinators. As suggested below, it should be more informal, in that anyone in good standing may become a coordinator. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:13, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If it's not a formal position, how does that differ from being a volunteer closing GANs? Am I, as an editor in good standing who has closed GARs, a GAR coordinator? CMD (talk) 01:30, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Coming down to oppose for now, this is not defined and we don't know what the GA process will look like after all these changes full through. Further, we didn't even have the barnstars distributed from the last GA drive, I do not find that a great omen for finding more dedicated volunteers. CMD (talk) 13:12, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support to me, this puts the onus on certain people to make sure the reviews are progressing, and being closed. Right now, all editors can close them, but barely any do. I'd rather we had something pushing for these to be closed. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:30, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support we have volunteers willing to coordinate, and it would not change anything for regular editors like myself who still can close GAR. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 09:13, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I have started working through the {{GAR request}} backlog, and resolving long-stuck and easily-judged community reassessments. If the role needs to be formalised, I am willing to take it up. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:17, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No objection to people who take on the responsibility of making sure the reassessments are closed after a reasonable time, but I'd prefer this to be as informal as possible (i.e. anyone should be able to close GARs, and anyone should be able to become a coordinator). —Kusma (talk) 13:31, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Mike below that we shouldn't create this as a formal position at this point in time if we try something like Proposal 12; one of these might be enough. —Kusma (talk) 15:17, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit concerned that if we have coordinators, editors who are not coordinators won't realize they also can close GARs. What AirshipJungleman29 is doing right now is what a coordinator might do. I think I'd rather try something that increases GAR visibility first, like proposal 12, and see if that helps, before doing something like this that might end up adding unnecessary bureaucracy. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:27, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Switching to oppose. I don't think this is well-enough defined, and the concerns expressed by e.g. SnowFire and CMD seem valid. The one aspect that is somewhat defined is "handle the workload"; this seems like a backward step, since it seems likely it would lead to reducing the GAR activity of non-coordinators. What does seem useful is the "freelance coordination" that I see here from some regulars -- BlueMoonset and CMD most recently; also Aircorn and some others that I'm not thinking of at the moment. By that I mean a willingness to post a note in a very old review asking about progress, or to spot drive by reviews and get them reverted/deleted, or to help out a new nominator or reviewer with a process question. That sort of "keep the place tidy" attitude is being a coordinator. I wouldn't want to restrict that sort of behaviour at all, but perhaps it would be a good idea to make a list (at GAN/I?) of the kinds of things those editors do to tidy up GAN, and point out that any experienced editor can do the same. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:42, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support to the point that I think this becomes a necessity if the below combining of individual and community GARs happens. Often GARs are opened by editors unfamiliar with the process. This is great as it is the best method we have of quality control (i.e. an editor comes across an article, notices it is marked as being good and don't think it is very good). However occasionally they shouldn't be put through GAR (edit warring, notability, dead links, crystal balling etc). The biggest advantage I can see is letting trusted editors familiar with the process close those early. As long as it is made clear that anybody can close a GAR this would be positive. Aircorn (talk) 07:05, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Another benefit would be to resolve stalemates. With low participation we need an easy way for editors that have commented on the GAR or worked on the article to close it. It happens a bit already, but making it explicit would be good. The risk associated with involved is negligible as whether an article is kept or delisted is not as impactful as other processes and there is always the GAN talk page if someone really disagrees. Done right this will work. Aircorn (talk) 07:09, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support per reasons given above. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 18:55, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support in the assumption that someone is willing to play coordinator. Jorahm (talk) 18:34, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support yeah, GAR definitely needs people willing to spin the gears. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 08:29, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. As others noted on the talk page of GAR, any editor can already close GARs, and the reason many GARs remained open for a long time was not due to the lack of someone willing to close them, but simply because they shouldn't yet be closed (and some of the "cleanup" was unwise IMO of just ending some GARs early). If the coordinator position is "someone to push things along", that's fine, but I'd argue that GAR should still maintain an "everyone can contribute" stance - it needs more contributors, not to restrict contributors even further, and no special qualifications are required to help out and/or close. SnowFire (talk) 09:20, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, as long as regular editors can still open and close non-contentious GARs. Coords should deal with contentious GARs, first by trying to get the wheels turning where participants haven't come to a consensus, and second to decisively close GARs where the above has failed and discussion has stalled out. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:45, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support, a leader might address issues in this part of GA. That there are open GARs on less than .1% of GAs indicates there is something seriously wrong with how GAR works. It should be MUCH easier to get deficient GAs delisted, and the current process is so cumbersome that I've never engaged in spite of seeing hundreds of deficient GAs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:48, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support; would be strong if these were overall GA process coordinators. I have often considered proposing something similar, but not so much for contentious reassessments as to address deficient reviews. I recognize this is a bigger step than many would be willing to take. Even if we don't go this far, shepherding slow GARs, and assessing consensus on stalled ones, can only be a good thing. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:57, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - The inherent decentralization of the GA process works for nominations, but has clearly failed GARs. casualdejekyll 00:12, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 14: Merge individual and community good article reassessment

Overwhelming consensus to implement this. Result: passed 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 00:41, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Streamline the GAR process by merging individual and community good article reassessment, with a process loosely modelled on the following concept:

All GARs are centrally listed, with anyone free to weigh in. A GAR can be closed as delist after a week by the editor who opened it, unless someone has objected to the delist. At that point participants are expected to discuss the article's issues, make any necessary changes to the article, and come to a consensus about whether the issues are resolved or not. If a clear consensus develops at that point, the opener can close the GAR on their own recognizance. If participants are not able to resolve the discussion, an uninvolved editor or the GAR coords (if that proposal gets consensus) should step in and determine next steps.

With apologies for booting you down slightly Femke - I figured I would clarify what exactly is being proposed, so editors can support or oppose based on a clear concept. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:24, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Originally proposed by User:Premeditated Chaos at WT:GAN#We need a MUCH quicker way of delisting GAs.. A simplified process is likely to decrease the barrier to entry. This would also make clear that most of the time involved closes are okay, as consensus is usually clear. As a bonus, it makes it easier to maintain scripts/bots. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:02, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - As someone slowly becoming active in GARs, the split between community and individual GARs makes no sense IMO. Merging them would make things easier. Onegreatjoke (talk) 23:47, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support the individual reassessment process is easily forgettable and incompatible with tools. PMC's proposal above seems workable to me. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:15, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support to streamline this clunky mess. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:16, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 20:30, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I understand why the two methods existed, but the Wikipedia where both made sense is ancient history. Today, I see little merit in having two methods of GARs. Those who used the individual GAR can still start one and largely guide it through the process as before. There are more benefits to allowing multiple participants in all GARs than there are drawbacks. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:32, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I like the idea of having all GARs be centrally located. Whether there is actual controversy is better than the current measure of whether individual GAR allowed. (t · c) buidhe 21:06, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Naturally I support my own proposal :) ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:11, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, although we should clarify the design. I would suggest all GARs are individual as a default, but that anyone is able to weigh in on them. We will need some system regarding closes though, as there are no guarantees that GARs are actually about the GACR. CMD (talk) 01:38, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This entire proposal is about losing the distinction between "individual" and "community" GARs and moving to a place where they are just GARs. We already live in a system where there is no guarantee that a GAR is about the GACR, and little chance anyone will notice a bad GAR. I could open any number of individual GARs right now that will not be centrally listed on any page you can watchlist, so good luck finding them unless you're checking the tracking category every single day. Unless they are noticed by the nominator (often inactive), a watchlister (unliklely as most articles getting individually GAR'd are obscure), or at WikiProjects (mostly dead), there's a good chance there will be zero oversight on them. I could wait a week and close all of those as delist for totally arbitrary reasons and no one would notice. Having all GARs on a central page will significantly decrease the likelihood of that happening, simply by increasing the visibility of each GAR and creating a centralized history that will log all GARs, as well as explicitly stating that you cannot close-as-delist unilaterally if there is opposition to the delist. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:16, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My point was on contentious closures not unseen ones. Your enhanced explanation, which was not there when I made my comment, has covered this point, so a closer can read this as a full support on the enhanced proposal. CMD (talk) 05:43, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Trainsandotherthings. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 03:18, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:31, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
support merge. Honestly, I found out that there are two distinct GARs only today, and started one individual (on a topic I know) and one community (on a topic I know nothing); I see no reason why it can't be just one simple GAR process. Artem.G (talk) 18:33, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I am seeing lots of benefits to this one. It will simplify the process, it will prevent editors opening a GAR and then delisting it without giving anyone time to fix the issues, it will be easier to monitor forgotten about GARs, and it will solve the issue of low participation in community GARs (despite the sudden increase in interest I remain skeptical that this will ever be a robust process outside a few topic areas so having a simple way to close those with few low participation is good). The only downsides I see would be solved with co ords. Aircorn (talk) 07:05, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support REDMAN 2019 (talk) 18:56, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Having GAR centrally located should increase participation at least marginally. Schierbecker (talk) 07:21, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 15: Invitation

Unanimous support in favor of sending invitations to new good article nominators. There's consensus that the invitation should be sent after 2-5 successful good article nominations are completed, but no consensus on when within this range. This proposal passes. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:34, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Have a bot leave an invitation to review GAN on first-time nominators talk pages if Proposal 9 passes. The invitation would briefly explain Proposal 9 and the benefits of doing a GAN review.

I don't see any reason this could not be done,, and I agree letting nominators know about the sort order seems a good idea. Would it be better to have a permanent explanation at the top of GAN, though? Perhaps with a one-sentence note at the top of each section saying something like "The nominations are sorted by the ratio of reviews to GAs; see here for an explanation", with a link to the more detailed explanation? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer a higher threshold than one, and for passes, not nominations. Putting something up to GAN can be intimidating, more so if it suddenly comes coupled with an implied expectation of even more work. CMD (talk) 12:33, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with CMD's preference for passes, but not the higher threshold. I disagree with the concept of five noms put forward below, I think that after an article passes a nomination for the first time, a bot could then leave a message to the gist of "Why not review someone elses?" Xx78900 (talk) 09:35, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with CMD. I would generally expect people to be allowed five GA noms for free before we start nudging them towards reviewing. —Kusma (talk) 13:18, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And five GAs is probably better than five noms as a threshold. —Kusma (talk) 13:19, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support the proposal in principle, agree that it should be for GAs not noms. Maybe 3 GAs? Personally, by my third GA I felt ready to start reviewing. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 12:20, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'll concede to experience. My thoughts in general come from trying to imagine a kind of new reviewer pipeline. What are the steps to bring a new GA reviewer on board? I would imagine most people first become aware it exists when they are editing an article that they (or another editor) nominate for GA. I like Mike Christie and Sammi Brie's idea about a box+message on the nominations page. This could work as a kind of next step, letting the GA nominator know about and see the benefits of reviewing. I also like the idea that Aircorn mentioned regarding an easy way for experienced reviewers to reach out during first time reviews because it again takes one of the steps (first review) and finds a way to potentially help a reviewer get past stumbling blocks. Rjjiii (talk) 06:08, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think reviewers should have seen the GA process a little bit in action. That could be through having GAs reviewed or it could be through following links from WP:GA and the header, but not by being told on their first nom that they should review to get theirs reviewed faster. I wouldn't mind a message after someone's first GA pass—"now you've had an article reviewed, if you'd like to pay it forward you're welcome to review something from the list". Or after someone's second, third, fifth GA nom—whatever there's consensus for, except at the point of their first GA nomination. — Bilorv (talk) 23:31, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For some people, reviewing seems like a really difficult task. I'm wondering whether we could identify some articles that are suitable for first time reviewers (something not too long by someone who does good work) to make it easier to get started. (No idea about specifics, so not making this a separate proposal). —Kusma (talk) 20:06, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, based on my own experience. The thing I remember most poignantly about my own GA experience is that it felt like a big deal to submit one, and it also felt like a big deal to review one – and how could I think myself experienced enough to review one if I hadn't even submitted one? Of course, now I have both submitted and reviewed a good number of GA noms, and I realize that this is not how the situation goes, but back when I was pondering after submitting Hooks Island I think something like this could have helped out. jp×g 18:29, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I also think it would be good to let usual nominators know of the new system, if possible. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:56, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support After a first pass (not nomination), and phrased like "pay it forward". I think by stressing the gamification part of it (you'll be prioritised), we may invite people that aren't quite ready to review. Also okay with notifying after second/third pass, but I think waiting till number 5 is too long. Femke (alt) (talk) 09:14, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not categorically opposed to this suggestion, but I am opposed to leaving invitations at too early a stage. Anything less than two successful nominations (i.e. two GAs) is too early in my opinion. TompaDompa (talk) 14:54, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 16: Change backlog box at top of GAN to list new nominators

The addition of a priority list to the backlog box has passed. It was suggested that a better name is found for the category, but this received no further commentary. Femke (alt) (talk) 08:46, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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If proposal 9 passes, change the backlog box, Wikipedia:Good article nominations/backlog/items, to list the five articles that sort to the top using the sort order in proposal 9. The containing page, Wikipedia:Good article nominations/backlog, would also change to say "highest priority" rather than "oldest".

Updated: Modifying this in light of the comments below to "list the five top articles by the new sort order as well as the five oldest articles". Xx78900, does this address your oppose? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:29, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is an idea Sammi suggested in comments on proposal 9, and I thought it was worth pulling out to get separate consensus -- it seems like a natural corollary to that proposal. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:19, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support as nominator, while noting I was proposing listing the oldest and first-time nominations. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 21:53, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support both of these suggestions. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 12:18, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
~~Oppose as written~~ I do think that adding the "top priority" articles is a good idea, but I don't think the oldest should be removed, as sometimes the very fact that they are the oldest nominations encourages people to review pages they wouldn't otherwise. As someone who has had two articles in the oldest five simultaneously, I think that had they not been there there's a reasonable chance they would still be there today. I would prefer to see both listed.
Xx78900 (talk) 09:32, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's better to extend the list than replace one with the other.
Firstly, unless the backlog gets so small that there are only 4 nominations, there will always be "5 oldest nominations", but there is never a guarantee that there will be a nomination by a new nominator, let alone 5. Right now there's about 50 nominations older than 30 days nominated by someone with 0 GAs; for comparison there are over 400 nominations older than 30 days regardless of number of GAs the nominator has. So "what happens to the box when all nominations by newbies get reviewed" is something to think about. Beyond that, there are a handful of editors with 0 GAs who have multiple nominations open at the same time, some as many as 5 open nominations. Is only the first nomination considered to be by a new nominator or all of them until the nominator gets a GA?
Secondly, the stats ChristieBot currently posts only lists number of GAs the nominator has, not number of nominations they've submitted. If an editor nominates a page that keeps failing, they'll keep getting featured. I don't think we want to call those "highest priority", so the metric or wording needs to be more precise.
Thirdly, a GAN unreviewed for 6-months is a problem regardless of how many GAs the nominator has, and I don't think we need to choose one over the other as "highest priority". I think it's enough to simply list both with an objective statement about what they are---oldest outstanding, and oldest by nominators with no GAs---and leave the prioritization up to the reviewers. — Wug·a·po·des 21:44, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To your question above, if a nominator keeps getting their nominations failed, they would still get treated as a new nominator under proposal 9. I think this is OK -- if they can't pass a GA we shouldn't be encouraging them to review, which is what proposal 9 is intended to do. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:12, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it does indeed, and I'm changing my vote to Support Xx78900 (talk) 18:26, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. If all the newbies get reviewed would this then move on to include experienced editors with many reviews? Rjjiii (talk) 20:37, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and if there are multiple nominations by a new nominator, as soon as the first one is promoted, the rest will move down. For example in the world history subtopic FuzzyMagma has three nominations currently listed at 5, 7, and 8 on the list. One is under review; if it's promoted the other two will move down to about 29 or 30 on the list. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:13, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 17: Redirect talk pages to the GAN talk page

passed with (near-)unanimous support! theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 01:09, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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The nominations page is by far the most watched and active. Everything discussed at the Criteria and reassessment page concerns the process so it makes sense to put it keep in all in one centralised place. Aircorn (talk) 07:15, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure about GAR, but most of the talk pages are certainly unneeded. CMD (talk) 08:44, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, with the caveat that this only makes sense for GAR if proposal 12 passes. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:14, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I consider myself active in the project but have only recently learned this page exists. It's function is entirely redundant. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 19:41, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The criteria page got redirected a while ago. So this will be for the WT:GA page and the WT:GAR (if it gets consensus) being redirected to WT:GAN. Aircorn (talk) 20:31, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I imagined all "talk" pages would go to the "Discussion" tab until I read this proposal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rjjiii (talk • contribs) 22:15, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support: a centralised location should mean fewer comments go unseen. — Bilorv (talk) 23:31, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, volume is not high enough to justify splitting discussion. One-stop-shop is good. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:19, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support: this is just a good idea. jp×g 08:59, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, but only for GAR if proposal 12 passes. I think the GAR talk volume may increase with simplifications. Makes the process more attractive to work in / GA sweeps possible. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:05, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 18: Put a nomination banner in mainspace

Unanimous opposition. Closed as not passed. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:01, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Put a notice banner for active GA nominations atop the article (in mainspace) as encouragement for editors reading the article to review it. czar 08:27, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, I don't expect most readers to be familiar with the GACR. The tag is already on the talkpage for those interested, and already shows in the existing article quality gadget. CMD (talk) 08:46, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose putting it in mainspace will confuse readers. Generally cleanup tags in mainspace do encourage changes, but they are also a previso about the quality of the article you are about to read. GANs don't change the quality. I'm not sure if it's a gadget, or always a thing, but it already says when an article is at GAN/FAC underneath the title. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:52, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Preferences->Gadgets->"Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header" is the trick. Also adds the colour coding. CMD (talk) 08:57, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Whether an article is currently a GA nominee is not of interest to the general reader and they probably don't understand what it means. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:53, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Whilst I'm all for advertising internal Wiki procedures to casual readers, I'm not sure this is the way to do it. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 11:23, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Per above. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 18:28, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I think this targets the wrong audience.Rjjiii (talk) 06:57, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose People should (and do) find their way to GAs via other routes. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:20, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I stumbled upon GAN, and the first time I forrayed into reviewing I made an absolute mess of things and my reviews were reverted. Now, I have 250 some reviews that I'll stand behind. GAN is one of the more complex aspects of Wikipedia and requires experience, advertising it to casual readers is a terrible idea in my opinion. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:11, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 19: Require self-review

Looks like this one's not gonna pick up the support necessary, closed as not passed. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 01:07, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Require the nominator to run through a self-review of the GA criteria as a checklist on the talk page to show how the article meets the criteria. This shifts the burden of the first passthrough comments from the reviewer to the nominator. It also shows where the nominator needs coaching if they didn't understand the criteria. For instance, if we want the reviewer to spotcheck citations for controversial statements, the nominator should be able to say they checked that in advance. czar 08:50, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose in favour of Proposal 20 as an alternative.

Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 11:36, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - seems overkill and preventative for actually nominating articles. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:19, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as utterly unenforceable. --Rs chen 7754 03:19, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the proposal. Are nominators not expected to have their articles meet the GACR already? CMD (talk) 06:22, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And when they're not (which, by a sampling of the GANs with open reviews, is often) the burden is placed on the reviewer to coach the nominator through the criteria. The burden should be the other way around, that the nominator vouches for how the article meets the criteria (on the article's talk page), and the review carries less of an expectation to provide the prescriptive steps to GA quality. For example, right now, it's possible for a reviewer to spend more time reviewing an article than the nominator spent preparing it for review. Nominators need more skin in the game. czar 08:19, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This does not accord with how I have had my GANs handled, or have handled GANs. If a nomination is so far from the GACR that coaching is needed, a reviewer should fail the article. Additionally, if a nominator is putting something up for GACR, I don't see the additional step doing more than requiring the nominator to say things are met, after which the reviewer will have to check them anyway. CMD (talk) 09:22, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Almost every GA nom involves some degree of coaching, i.e., bringing things to the attention of the nominator. The difference is whether a reviewer needs to repeat the most common observations each time, which is where I thought a nominator pre-flight checklist would help. Part of what wore me out from reviewing was needing to cite the same MOS passages each time to explain the change (rather than writing it with no explanation). I developed a ton of macros from when I did more frequent reviews. This is more egregious with new nominators, I think.

Spot-checking the edit history of WP:GAN, most of the reviews coming through are for experienced nominators, so this need not apply to them, but that is also part of the problem: It's no surprise that experienced nominators get reviewed first, as theirs are much easier to review (easier and more forgiving) than the burden of handling a first-time nominator, for reasons I just described.

Perhaps an interim solution would be a checklist suggested to new nominators but not required. czar 21:08, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Any form of self-review for an "awarded" article assessment is worthless and unenforceable. Short of putting a chip in editors' heads that will explode if they don't do it in good faith, it's a brief bureaucratic hurdle that will do basically nothing to help the process. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:13, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The nominator should have done that already per WP:GAI. This, at least, is not unclear. I do not see any benefit to this proposal—which nominators have put their articles forward thinking it doesn't meet the criteria? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:33, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 20: Create pre-review bot

Support for this proposal is evenly split; no consensus has developed to implement it. Users have also raised concerns about its feasibility. The option is left open for simpler reviewer tools that can be used manually, should there be an aspect of reviewing where a bot would be more efficient. Result: not passed. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:28, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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When an article is nominated, have a bot provide a low-level pre-review with advice/suggestions for improvement, so the nominator is prompted to clean up the basics before the reviewer arrives. (This moves some of the reviewer's burden to an auto-reviewer bot.) I.e., anything afoul of the quickfail criteria, notice of any open maintenance tags, Earwig %, recent edit warring, reversion of drive-by nom (if approved above), paragraphs lacking citations. czar 08:50, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The basic idea is good, especially for things that are easy to spot for a bot. One question is where the pre-review should go. Should the bot create the review page right away? Currently, the reviewer creates the page when they start the review. Or should the bot post its initial assessment to the nominator's talk page? Or something else? Phlsph7 (talk) 10:57, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support in principle. This would be both user-friendly for new reviewers and save a bunch of time on menial tasks/checks. To echo what @Phlsph7 has said above, we should decide when this review bot would run. I am not familiar with bots at all, but could the reviewer decide when to run it? A particularly long review might need a second copyvio or edit warring check at the end. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 11:35, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I guess the simplest way would probably be to run the bot right after the nomination and post a comment on the nominator's talk page. This way, the nominator has time to address the issues (or withdraw the nomination) before the review starts. Currently, there are bot messages to inform the nominator when a review has started and when it has finished. The pre-review could be one more such message right at the beginning. Having the bot create the review page, on the other hand, might cause problems for other bots that count reviews and update the overview based on who created the review page (though I'm not sure if that's how they work). Making the reviewer decide when to run the bot could also work but might be more complicated to implement and requires knowledge on the side of the reviewer of this process. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:07, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Running within 24 hours of the GA nom and posting to the article's talk page with a ping for the nominator should be sufficient czar 08:13, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Are there any bots capable of this sort of thing? I don't think this is a simple task. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:16, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Back in ye olde days there was a toolforge peer review program which ran through basic grammar, spelling, wiki formatting, checked if sources were dead, and a number of other useful tasks. Long gone by now, but the concept is possible. Now we just have the overlink tool. CMD (talk) 18:10, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Back when I reviewed WP:FLC nominations regularly, I used the tools at Wikipedia:Featured list tools (which appear to be the same ones as Template:Featured article tools) heavily. Those seem to still be around though, so are you referring to something different? TompaDompa (talk) 18:38, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Those aren't exactly what I remember, but I suspect the tool was drawing from those or something equivalent. CMD (talk) 06:26, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There was Dispenser's Peer Reviewer, which was linked in the {{good article tools}}. I don't think their code is open source. Its precursor was User:AndyZ/peerreviewer, which has some good history. czar 08:12, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The MilHistBot goes through recently-tagged MilHist articles and gives them a rating of stub, start, C or B. It performs many of the checks described here. It checks referencing, word count, the presence of images and some other things. I implemented it to reduce the project's workload. Articles rated B class are flagged for human review. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:11, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's not a terrible idea, but we do need to be a bit careful if we run Earwig to state that doesn't mean that there definitely isn't any copyvio in the article, and reviewers still need to check. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:22, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support A good idea in theory, the hardest part would probably be setting up the bot. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 18:30, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as written. It may be beneficial for potential nominators to have access to an automated review tool, but I would not wish to move any of the responsibility for the actual review from humans to bots. —Kusma (talk) 09:36, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - a perfect bot might be nice in theory, but the more I think about this, the most un-implementable it seems, and liable to cause other problems. Earwig can have false positives, for example, caused by long quotes and titles - people would still need to go look at it no matter what. More trouble than its worth. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:21, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I think this is likely to cause more problems than it solves, especially for newer reviewers who may become reliant on it. Also, much of what's suggested in the original post feels implausible - how will a bot determine if an article meets quickfail criteria? As a nominator, I wouldn't want a bot checking my grammar, and as a reviewer, I wouldn't want to rely on a bot's estimation of CV or other issues. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:40, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per PMC—we don't want new reviewers to become reliant on evaluation tools rather than actually assessing the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:34, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Changed my mind. Support on condition that the bot is limited in scope—let's say it checks for copyright violations, that images are captioned, for words that may violate WP:WTW, and similar low-level tasks. I don't think the bot should be helping with the mini-peer review aspect. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:35, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Premeditated Chaos and AirshipJungleman29, this isn't meant to replace the reviewer but to save them the time of having to repeat macros that may be obvious to them but not the nominator. No one suggested that it would quickfail an article on its own, but it would be helpful to let the nominator know, for example, if they have cleanup tags on the article that they didn't see, or if they have a high Earwig percentage that they'll have to explain at some point anyway, or to have a heads up that an article's high editing frequency may construe edit warring. Any tool that saves the reviewer more time will make the review process less onerous. We want the reviewer to focus on the review itself, not flagging stuff like potential overlinking and sentences that are missing inline citations, as a bot can easily preemptively flag those just the same and the nominator can provide their response in advance of the actual review. czar 20:33, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As a nominator, if you're missing cleanup tags on the article, you're not paying sufficient attention to it in the first place. As a reviewer, you're going to have to double-check anything the bot says anyway - how is a bot going to accurately judge whether an article is "a long way from meeting any one of the six good article criteria"? Checking for edit-warring takes a single click to the history page. Overlinking isn't part of the GA criteria, and actually neither is having every sentence individually cited (that's not even a requirement at FAC), so I don't know that those are things a GA review bot should even be pointing out. I just don't see how this is going to save time. I think it's going to force people (both nom and reviewer) to spend more time explaining why whatever the bot decided was an issue isn't actually an issue. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:57, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestions in the vein of this example would provide some light guidance for new nominators while they wait three months for a review. They aren't obliged to do anything about it, but if their reviewer is going to complain about overlinking and inline citations (they will) as part of the peer review element of GA, this gives them a head start without the reviewer having to mention it. I'd think of this more as a peer reviewer bot than a GA review bot. czar 01:27, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is a hard task, and here's one example: We might prefer, as a general rule of thumb, at least one inline citation per paragraph, but excluding the lead, and most sections that consist entirely of lists and templates (e.g., ==See also==). That could probably be coded. But the other day, I reverted a {{fact}} tag that was on a bland introductory sentence that said something like "There are several things". The rest of the (cited) paragraphs in that section proved the both the accuracy and verifiability of that sentence. But a bot would look at that and flag it as an unsourced paragraph. This is technically true, but it's not something that needs a citation.
If you wanted to do something fairly easy, then having a bot deliver the mw:ORES score for the article might be helpful. If it's been put up for GA and ORES says C-class or lower, it's unlikely to pass. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:44, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose: I think i'm coming down against because my preferred project is DYK, which did have a review bot back in the day. I don't think it proved to be a huge time-saver; the problem is that all of the things it checked for (newness, length, QPQ, copyvio) were things that any human could easily recheck in under a minute, especially if script-assisted. GA has even fewer automatable tasks that can be checked, because DYK has a bunch of esoteric rules having to do with newness and stuff like that. If the community isn't yet at the point where it trusts bots to do natural-language processing, then this is probably something we should shelve for another time. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Quick fails are easy reviews. This doesn't feel like a problem? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Does the bot or a similar bot exist? The FA peer review tool is nice, but gives a lot of bogus information. For example, it will vaguely complain about multiple varieties of English if you cite sources with -isation and -ization in the titles. And doesn't rater just estimate a grade based on similarity to other articles? You mention inline citations but the GAC seem both pretty lax and pretty specific about which lines require an inline citation. I feel like it would be relatively easy to create a bot that checks a paragraph's length against a ratio of citations but very difficult to create a bot that specifically hunts down material likely to be challenged. Rjjiii (talk) 20:30, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 21: Make GA status more prominent in mainspace

General consensus to have an RFC, proposal passes 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 05:27, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Hold an RFC on options to make GA status more prominent in mainspace. Showing and explaining GA status in a more prominent way would both help with reader literacy of status (and prompt curiosity about the criteria) while rewarding editors for their efforts. I.e., one RFC proposal could be to turn the article title the color green with a tooltip that explains how the article has been reviewed.

In a former career, I observed a high school teacher that happened to be teaching research skills on using Wikipedia. She said that the lock icon in the corner meant that it had been reviewed. Readers have no idea what our esoteric icons mean, so a little explanation of what exactly is verified and what isn't could go a long way towards mutual incentives. czar 09:33, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment This is potentially quite a big overhaul, i.e. if we're going to do it for GAs we should do it for every article with an icon. This kind of exists already—when you hover over the GA icon it says "This is a good article. Click here for more information." Perhaps all pop-up descriptions should be more descriptive upfront (e.g. "This is a good article, meaning it has been independently reviewed by another Wikipedia user as being "good"). Probably beyond the scope of this proposal drive, but I'd support a wider policy change.

Another thought—perhaps a more immediate focus should be getting icons visible in mobile view (seeing as that's how the majority of people use Wikipedia these days I'd guess). Again, beyond the scope of this proposal drive, but it's a personal bugbear of mine. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 11:28, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comment If we're going to do this, we need to make sure it doesn't look like a cleanup banner, as I think quite a lot of non-editors/casual users of Wikipedia at least have some awareness that "big banner at the top of page = something is wrong". Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 09:19, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment/Question: As a former WikiEd student, myself, you'd be surprised how little the teachers know about Wikipedia at times. They rely heavily on the WikiEd advisors that are assigned and most aren't regular editors. I do know one who is, but its a mixed bag of competencies. They don't teach article assessment in these courses, and the general public is unaware of these assessments. If it was my design, I'd put the icon for each page's assessment in the top corner (even though its probably a bit excessive to idiot proof the site more than it already is).

I'm curious how you envision this RFC. How, in your opinion, show GA be made more prominent? Or is this strictly a proposal to start a separate discussion? 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 20:00, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think there are a number of potential visual treatment options but first I wanted to see if there was even interest in workshopping this. Personally my recommendation would be for a visual system for trust like Twitter's verified icon (notwithstanding its recent history) that accompanies plain language explaining the extent to which the article has been community vetted ("X editors have endorsed this article as meeting Wikipedia's core policies. This does not mean that all sentences match their sources. Click here to this article's last review, from January 2023.") But this is just my opinion—I think there are lighter weight options that would still be useful and I'd like to see a bunch of options workshopped. czar 08:37, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

you'd be surprised how little the teachers know about Wikipedia at times – Believe me, seeing the quality of WikiEd output on articles that I've watchlisted, I am not surprised. Just the choices of articles that they let students make is a big giveaway. — Bilorv (talk) 23:32, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've for a while thought that having a "good article(s) of the day" would be worthwhile. Since there are far more GAs than FAs, we could feature a few on the main page per day, each getting maybe a sentence. That would require a proper RfC to implement though. Just an idea. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 04:33, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is something worth considering. I wonder how it would play against DYK, which is the closest thing we have to this right now. It would probably require a similar nomination system as well, which is another undertaking altogether. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 07:16, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, DYK already is putting recent GAs on the main page, as recent GAs become eligible for that section. czar 08:38, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The articles DYK puts on the main page can be GAs, but often are not. I don't think that's a reason to preclude something specifically featuring GAs. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:57, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There was a similar proposal at the village pump a while ago Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 174#Move good/featured article topicons next to article name. Supported then and would again. There is a user script which already changes the title colour so should be easy to implemented. Main concerns from memory were quality control, but if we are concerned about that then why even have the process. As long as we acknowledge Good Article don't necessarily mean it is a good article. Aircorn (talk) 05:33, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I like Wugapodes idea there about an A/B testing to see if the position raises awareness. Also, maybe it will come up in the future again as the new Wikipedia layout will de-emphasize the FA/GA/Protected icons: https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Deployment_of_Vector_(2022) Rjjiii (talk) 06:47, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how easy this would be to change, but the current tooltip for the GA icon feels odd to me. "This is a good article." When the more accurate statement would be something like "This article passed a Good Article review on XX/XX/XXXX." The same is true for FA. Rjjiii (talk) 06:54, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good change, although I suspect it may need to be raised somewhere more central. CMD (talk) 09:24, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that would be better, ideally if it could imply that it is the old version that passed the review (so the current version might not be as good). —Kusma (talk) 09:41, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm opposed to enhancing the illusion of reliability of our articles. Anyone can edit our articles and change their content, so the fact that a past version has been assessed and found acceptable should not mean too much to the reader, who always needs to use their best judgment when considering whether to believe the content of the article or not. —Kusma (talk) 09:40, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I think an additional advantage of this might be to make the process more prominent to newish editors, who can learn a lot from going through the process. I agree with Rjjiii that the text should be changed, to make it less likely that we create an illusion of reliability. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 13:01, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support: reader literacy and higher visibility of internal processes is something I generally support, so I'd be in favour of most things we could do here, like making the title colour green or having a more visible "verified account"-style GA icon next to the title. — Bilorv (talk) 23:32, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support; I've found that very few people outside of Wikipedia even realize that there is a difference between articles that undergo peer review processes and articles that don't – for a while I figured that the daily "featured article" was just a random page that people thought was cool. jp×g 09:01, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, although given the impact of these changes, and the fact that they will have to be implemented for FAs as well, the RFC will probably have to be held at WP:VPR. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:36, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. GA is meant to be a lightweight process. It's something that says that at least one other editor checked an article and thought it was good. But that's not enough to highlight something to the public as "approved content", at least not heavily. "Articles one person, possibly in 2011, thought was decent?" The more GA is highlighted, the larger the pressure becomes to turn GA into something like WP:FA. But we already have a FA process (and an A-class review process, too, for those who want a FAC-lite). Basically, either we're increasing the stress on reviewers who want to avoid starring as the bad guy in some newspaper story if it turns out the article they reviewed was wrong yet also highlighted to the public as accurate, or we're misleading the public on a casual GA process signifying more than it really does. SnowFire (talk) 09:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Kusma andbSnowFire Xx78900 (talk) 14:26, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support I agree, but not because it'll help GA reviewing. While I know many people formally see GA as a low bar, if we're being honest, on average a GA on any decent topic will be much better than a non-GA on any decent topic, and there's a far greater likelihood a reader can actually trust what they're reading. Trust that it makes sense and is reasonably broad. That's true in practice IME. We should signal this fact to readers. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:24, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mixed I generally agree with Kusma that we should be transparent about the limitations of our articles, but I also agree there's room for improvement in how the GA information is presented. I think the tooltip could be improved: "this is a good article" isn't much help to anyone. Being upfront about what the GA criteria are and how it got that little icon would be worthwhile taking some language from WP:GA: "A previous version of this article was reviewed against a core set of editorial standards". It makes it clear that it might not apply to this version, but also gives the reader some sense of what the GA process is without needing to click through. I also think it might help to change what the icon links to. Right now, it links to WP:GA, but maybe it should link to the GA review? The benefit is that it actually shows interested readers what the review process was, what issues were raised (and fixed), and gives them information with which to evaluate the current article's quality. The benefit is that these are changes that could probably be implemented without a project-wide RfC since it's not changing the interface or how other icons might work.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wugapodes (talk • contribs) 08:42, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The proposal here is to hold an RfC on whether or not we should make GA status more prominent in mainspace. This seems like a conversation to have, and even those opposed are simply making substantial arguments against making this more prominent rather than actually addressing whether or not this warrants an RfC. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 18:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I support holding an RfC on this matter, and while we're at it the same should be done for FAs, but that's a separate issue. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 19:05, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, one-reviewer processes should not be more prominent on the main page (and yes, that applies to DYK and OTD, too). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:49, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support along the lines of Red-tailed hawk's comment: the general idea sounds good in principle, or at least not so bad that basic policy rules out putting it before the community for review. I'd personally be more inclined to endorse changes that clarify what "GA" means, rather than just elevating the prominence of GA status for its own sake, but the latter may well go along with the former. I don't think we need to touch the Main Page, necessarily, but on the other hand, I can also imagine proposals that would give GAs more visibility there without bending principles. For example, a "Good Articles of the Week" list could be vetted with a comparable level of scrutiny as ITN/DYK. XOR'easter (talk) 16:44, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 22: Add short description and shorten `{{GANentry}}`

Change supported, proposal passes 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 03:31, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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I mentioned this above but wanted to break it out to a separate proposal for consideration. We now know that most editors find new reviews through WP:GAN, so it behooves us to make the page legible. Right now, each row looks like this:

Example (edit | talk | history | protect | links | watch | logs | page views (90d)) (start review) (0 reviews, 0 GAs) WikipediaUser (talk) 00:00, 1 January 2000 (UTC)[reply]

When it could instead be shorter, with something along the lines of:

Example (talk | history | start review) – short description – (0 reviews, 0 GAs) WikipediaUser (talk) 00:00, 1 January 2000 (UTC)[reply]
Example (talk | history | start review) – short description
Nominator stats: 0 reviews, 0 GAs · WikipediaUser (talk) 00:00, 1 January 2000 (UTC)[reply]

Can play with the specifics but this would give more relevant info to a potential reviewer (the short description) and reduce the clutter of a bunch of shortlinks most editors won't use. I'd also be in favor of moving the review/GA counter to the second line and encourage more nominators to use the {{GA nominee}} |note= field to make WP:GAN entries more appetizing. czar 01:36, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support, most of those links don't need to appear, and as bland as short descriptions can be, some are useful (and they're not blander than the various pagelinks). CMD (talk) 01:45, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, agree that the short desc would be more useful than those links. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 02:25, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, solid notion. Making the page a little user-friendly is always good. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:23, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This may aid discovery. Also, notes in GAN are far rarer than DYK comments so far. It would also encourage editors to add short descriptions to articles that are missing them and don't have deliberately blank ones (you will need some fallback for pages that do not have SDs). Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 03:27, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I can't think of a time when I've protected an article or looked at its pageviews via the GANlinks. Of the two examples given, I prefer example 1, but example 2 is also acceptable. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:34, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support for removing the unnecessary links. I'm not sure that we need the short description. But with or without short description, it would be an improvement. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:31, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support: Easy and smart to do. jp×g 09:01, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support removing redundant links (protect??), oppose adding short description as often redundant to the section header. —Kusma (talk) 09:23, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, whatever we do, a typical entry should fit into one line. —Kusma (talk) 09:43, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support cutting the links to four -- article, talk, history, "start review". Not sure the short description would be worth it -- it can be quite long and as Kusma says it is likely to be redundant with the section header. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:45, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support but not with short description—that's just replacing clutter with more clutter. Will also include more space for metadata as discussed above. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:44, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support shortening, oppose addition of short description - not helpful and will only clutter the page. Artem.G (talk) 18:47, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Nice idea, makes the list less intimidating. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 20:00, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The "protect | links | watch | logs | page views (90d)" links would be of very little use to most reviewers anyway. A short description would also be helpful. Epicgenius (talk) 20:04, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support: I admit I was pretty intimidated by the GAN list the first time I saw it: it literally looks like a "jungle" of text! Plus, some of those links would be especially confusing and distracting to new reviewers like myself. Short descriptions could be useful, but it would depend from situation to situation, in my opinion... If we implement them, I think the second model would be the better one. Oltrepier (talk) 20:30, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 23: Make GAN categories subpages

The list at ChristieBot already exists, and assembling the GAN page by transclusion is not technically possible, so this is not passed. More prominence can be given to the ChristieBot listing at WP:GAN however. Femke (alt) (talk) 14:50, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Split the topical sections of WP:GAN off into transcluded subpages, so that people can watchlist them individually. Do the same with User:SDZeroBot/GAN sorting.

Support as proposer. So this, as well as proposals 24 and 25, are coming from the perspective of someone interested in reviewing articles in my area of interest, but not actively watching WP:GAN, since we're apparently an untapped resource. Currently the only visibility you have to that group is article alerts, which in my experience are not used much even by active WikiProject participants. Making it possible for people to watchlist GANs on a specific topic is the easiest way to increase this visibility that I can think of, though ideally it would happen alongside a rationalisation of those categories (proposal 24 and 25). – Joe (talk) 06:35, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Already exists. :) See the list at User:ChristieBot. But we can advertise it better, i.e., let Mike know we like it. czar 08:49, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perfect. But yeah, this doesn't appear mentioned on Wikipedia:Good article nominations outside the navbox at the bottom? Maybe add links directly under the section headings? – Joe (talk) 14:17, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, looks like a decent help that can't hurt. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:01, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Only if the main page continues to exist as the primary listing. I like browsing the GAN list all in one go, I often do simple ctrl+F keyword searches on it to find articles to review, and I would be deeply annoyed to have to do that on a dozen subpages. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:29, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - seems reasonable to me, as long as the subpages are still transcluded onto WP:GAN. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:11, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Being able to watchlist a single section of WP:GAN would be very useful and it would make watchlisting WT:GAN more convenient as well without the constant revisions at WP:GAN. Steelkamp (talk) 16:55, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. As Czar points out above, this is already in place -- see the list at ChristieBot; for example Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Topic lists/Engineering and technology. It's not possible to assemble the GAN page by transcluding these, since that would exceed template transclusion limits. In any case it would mean you couldn't watchlist GAN as a whole -- you'd have to watchlist a dozen subpages. So I don't think this proposal is feasible for WP:GAN. Subpages could be made for SDZeroBot's pages, and it looks as if the transclusion limits would not apply there because it doesn't use GANentry, but the same caveat would apply -- transclusion would prevent anyone watchlisting the parent page. That might not matter as much because one could still watch GAN. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:05, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 24: Realign GAN categories with a more widely-used categorisation

Proposal did not obtain any support. There is general openness to changing the categories if a better system is presented, but no alternate system has support at this time. Result: not passed Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:04, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Change the categories used to sort nominations on WP:GAN to match those used by WikiProjects, Featured Articles, ORES topic predictions (as used by User:SDZeroBot/GAN sorting), or something else widely-used elsewhere, making it easier for potential reviewers to find articles that interest them.

Support as proposer. I don't know the history behind the GAN categories, but they're pretty weird. For example, all of human history, prehistory, and archaeology, all of the world, including all historical figures, the scholars who study them, and the works that write---unless they're royalty or nobility---are "world history". SDZero's list is better, but my preference would be to align everything with (major, active) WikiProjects. – Joe (talk) 06:35, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I broadly support a review of the categories, which were stuck in aspic until the good work of Mike Christie. I made a small start in a discussion with Mike before, however it was understandably overtaken by other events given Christiebot was finding its legs. I don't think Wikiprojects alone will be a viable way to do it, but it is certainly worth looking into. This will require a separate discussion, so I am not putting this as a support now. CMD (talk) 07:27, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral major active WikiProjects are in short supply, and those that exist often considerably overlap. Width of category is often beneficial, and I don't think articles being located in multiple categories on the main page is necessarily a good thing. I would however support a secondary page, like the deletion-sorting proposal discussed below. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:28, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A re-think might be in order, but we should discuss what we want to achieve with it. Ideally we shouldn't have categories that are always empty or categories that have 50+ entries at all times. Whether other existing category schemes do that I do not know. —Kusma (talk) 15:29, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My thought has been that as Christie bot is tracking all additions, it will be able to easily generate #submissions/category/month (after sufficient time?). We would want to balance new entries with existing GA lists if we want to keep a simple GAN->GA topic flow for reviewers. CMD (talk) 16:08, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Module:Good article topics/data defines the topic lists and subtopics. I don't know what else depends on it, or how to find out, but I think the theory is that if you change that page, everything else just works. I didn't know about that page when I wrote ChristieBot so would have to manually align its topics with that list, or change it to use that page as a definition, but I can easily do that if necessary. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:48, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry Mike, I'm missing something, where does that page define the subtopics? It looks like it's just the overall topics (eg. Transport just goes to "eng"). I have added the GAN sorting and Featured Article categories to Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Topic Values/Subtopics for comparison. CMD (talk) 16:11, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, should have clicked through before shooting my mouth off. I recalled having to change the categorization in ChristieBot for that but misremembered. Then I think we can use the page you link to as the work area for proposed changes? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:25, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think so, and perhaps that talkpage can be used if this conversation gets quite large. Whatever the consensus is can replace Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Topic Values, and will need to be reflected in the GA lists, the GAN sorting, and in all the bots, templates, and obscure subpages that interact with these (big job?). CMD (talk) 16:33, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea of using mw:ORES topic predictions (anything that could be automated could save time later), but generally agree with the sentiment that it's good to synchronize with (any) other existing systems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:50, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I think that GAN should follow GA in this matter, and if a major overhaul is intended, it should be proposed for all GAs, with GAN to follow whatever GA decides. If this is to be a unilateral change without regard to GA, then Oppose. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:21, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral - could result in some marginal improvements if someone with time and energy wants to take it on, but I don't see this as a high priority. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:55, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 25: Allow nominations to be placed in multiple categories

no consensus Conversation has died out and there really isn't any support to either side. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 22:26, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Allow nominations to be placed in multiple categories on WP:GAN, WP:DELSORT-style.

Support as proposer. As an example, I just nominated Lamia Al-Gailani Werr, which could conceivably be of interest to reviewers interested in archaeology, (academic) biography, or improving coverage of women. But at the moment I can only pitch it to one of them. If I were nominating it for deletion however, I could use WP:DELSORT to ensure all three groups saw it. – Joe (talk) 06:35, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Currently we only list articles in our list of GAs once (which I don't think should be changed), so the current nom classification is meant to assist in leading to that final listing. There may be a clever way to do this (a primary category?), so I am not opposing. I do note though that if the article is tagged by the appropriate Wikiprojects, these noms will pop up on Article Alerts for those projects. CMD (talk) 07:30, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps, like del-sorting, it could be a separate listing? Article alerts are pretty much my only engagement with GA at the moment but, as I said above, I've long had the impression that view people regularly use them. – Joe (talk) 08:23, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is best done via Article Alerts, which already exist. —Kusma (talk) 15:16, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Kusma on this. If anything this suggestion would make the list even longer and more unwieldy which we don't want. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:18, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Now that proposal 22 has passed, reviewers will be able to see the article's short description which will go some way to showing its breadth. Also, as mentioned above, it would make the GAN list way longer (even if only in appearance). Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 09:14, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support: I think the one-category-per-nom norm has kind of limited the number of categories for GA we're willing to create, which is kind of a shame. I think we'd probably do away with a main categories page if this passes. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:19, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral - similar to the above, could result in marginal improvements if implemented correctly, but would require a big overhaul and probably not worth the trouble. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This would make the GAN process that much more complicated. It's not a significant burden to ask nominators to choose the most relevant category, and reviewers have different options for viewing active nominations. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:15, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 26: Make lots of pages instructing how to create a good article

Consensus is that users may write essays at their leisure without a formal GA essay system. Result: Not passed. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:41, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Make a good article version of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy

Support. I don't know how much can be written, but I would love to see more detailed instructions and advice on how to evaluate criteria two and three. With that said, whether this happens isn't really about whether it passes as a proposal, but it's about whether someone is actually willing to write these things. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:17, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do it! This doesn't need consensus to implement, although this would be a good place to round up some writers. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:00, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I'm just wondering what you mean by "lots of pages"? One of the concerns further up is that there are currently too many different pages on how to review a GA, and we should be focussing on something more centralised and comprehensive. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 09:11, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Individual users should write whatever guides they like, of course, but trying to do this formally would be a waste of time. The Academy main page gets under 100 pageviews a month, and it's prominently linked in the MilHist header. That's peanuts already, and it gets worse - most of the individual Academy pages are getting under 5 views a month, closer to 0 views a month the farther down the list you go, which tells us that there's basically no clickthrough from the Academy landing page to the actual guide pages. As nice as these pages are, absolutely no one is even looking at them. I have no reason to believe a similar suite of pages for GA would be any different. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:14, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with part of this -- that it's probably not worth doing this formally -- but I don't think page views tell the same story for an instructional page that they do for an article. The most successful essay I ever wrote is WP:RECEPTION, for which a lot of the initial page views were probably me. I doubt it averaged 20 "real" page views per month for the first year. It's been cited hundreds of times at GAN, FAC, and PR, and I like to believe has had a material effect on the quality of reception sections at hundreds more pages. Many of the people who found the essay useful are almost certainly not reading it again and again; they've learned whatever it has to teach and they don't need to go back to it. So a small number of page views doesn't mean no effect on editing practice.

A separate point is that if we do end up with a place to put essays, it shouldn't just be a copy of part of {{Wikipedia essays}}, or of the "building content" section of that template -- we can already point to that if we want to. I'm not sure what that would leave us with though -- GAN-specific content-building essays? What would an example be? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, pageviews don't tell you everything, but it's clear that those pages are collecting dust in a way that WP:RECEPTION is not. Unlike RECEPTION, nobody links to those pages individually or refers to them in discussions. Even the overview has only 10 incoming links and two of those are from a 2009 discussion about writing it. Most have not been updated since they were written c. 2010. All I mean to say is that it was clearly a lot of work that doesn't seem to be being used very much. Since volunteer time is our most significant resource, I hate to see it formally directed to making things I feel will also not be used.

Also, splitting up guidance between multiple pages makes it harder for users to find what they're looking for because they have to check multiple pages, some of which they may forget or not know about. We've already got confusion with having instructions spread across WP:GACR, WP:GANI, WP:RGA, and WP:GANOT; I'm not sure adding more guidance pages is the solution. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't be opposed to informal essays/guides about this. In fact, some users have written guides (e.g. User:Farang Rak Tham/How to create a good article on a Buddhist topic) which may be helpful to editors interested in the topic. However, I agree with PMC that formalizing this process may not be a worthwhile use of editors' time. – Epicgenius (talk) 20:13, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 27: Give nominators with a certain number of reviews a minimum sort-weight

Self-closing. I have been swayed by objections, and opposition is universal. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 07:11, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Following Prop 9 passing, I wonder if it might be fairer if those that have a very high number of reviews shouldn't get some form of minimum weight. With a ratio of 4.46 (259 reviews to 58 GAs), I am basically guaranteed to be at or near the top of any sorting; however, some, like User:Chiswick Chap (311 reviews to 488 GAs) and User:Sturmvogel 66 (914 reviews to 821 GAs) are (to my mind) unfairly penalized by this. Certainly, their ratios are not as good, but I would defy anyone to say they haven't contributed very significantly to the project; indeed per the stats, they are some of the most prolific reviewers in our history. I am strongly in favor of our new sorting system, but think it could be made fairer by setting minimum weights to nominators with a certain number of reviews, perhaps 0.5 for every 50 reviews, or something similar (perhaps a simple decimal value for every single review would be easier), such that Chiswick and Sturmvogel would get ratios of 6 and 18, in recognition of their extensive work on both sides of GA, rather than their present 0.63 and 1.13. And of course, any ratio higher than the minimum assigned by the number of reviews would be retained. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 19:15, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I was planning to post here a different way to address the same problem; I actually posted this at the feedback page already:

I have a further suggestion which might be worth turning into a proposal above if others think it's worth it. A couple of commenters were concerned that this would push a user with just one or two GAs a long way down the list in a section. The way the sort order is set up now has a parameter called "free GAs": the number of GAs you can have before your nominations are sorted by your review/GAs ratio. Currently that's set to zero. To see the effect, look at the Songs section; in the new sort order "Lo Siento" is 28th of 29 -- the nominator has 1 GA and no reviews. If we set "free GAs" to 1, that nomination would be 5th. We could have a proposal asking everyone what the right value for "free GAs" is. Having seen the effect of the sort order I think the right answer is 0, 1 or 2; probably 1.

A second thought is that we might want to change the ratio to cover a finite time period, rather than all time. For example, a reviewer with hundreds more reviews than GAs can drop fifty GAs into the list and still be at the top, and a nominator with a hundred more GAs than reviews has no incentive to review because doing thirty or forty reviews would still not move them from the bottom of the list. So perhaps we could we make the reviews/GAs calculations refer only to the last 12 months? I wouldn't be able to implement this at the moment because I don't have data by date before ChristieBot took over on 31 October, but if everyone liked this idea we could run on the "all-time" numbers for a month or so, and then switch to "from November 2022" until a year had passed, after which it could be "trailing year". [...] Though if we were to do this, I think "free GAs" should apply to "all time GAs" -- that is, you don't get another free GA after a year has passed.

I think both this and Iazyges' idea are targeted at the same problem. Iazyges's suggest puts a maximum effect in place; my suggestion focuses on recent behaviour. I'd be OK if there's a consensus for eitehr approach but I think I prefer the "recent behaviour" one because backlogs are an issue now, and it's behaviour now that matters in fixing them. I could also manage any reasonable variation in the code, such as discounting older reviews/GAs, but not fully to zero, if that would be better. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:52, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Weak oppose for now. I think what CC and Sturmvogel have going for them is that their articles are fairly safe bets – they have name recognition, reviewers are used to passing their articles. I don't think they really need a process boost. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 08:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I kind of agree that the ratio of reviews/GAs might not be the perfect measure for this (something like log(reviews)/log(GAs) would be my next idea). But it is very simple and can be easily checked to be accurate by hand. If we think that people won't question the ranking anyway but just trust the bot, there are a lot of other things we could do, for example we could sort by weighted wait time, so a 3 month old nom by someone with 100 GAs, 1 review has a similar ranking to a 1 month old nom by a newbie. Before we do any of that, let us wait for a few months to see what effect the current sort order has on things. —Kusma (talk) 09:22, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this is a good idea. It would mean that some editors who have been active here for a long time would pretty much permanently be near the top (likely only below the ones with no GAs yet), which would push newer contributors further down the list. I don't know how much of a difference the sort order makes, but if it is important this suggestion could end up having the inadvertent effect of dissuading editors from contributing past their first successful nomination. I'm inclined to agree with theleekycauldron that some form of name recognition probably does the trick for prolific contributors (making this unnecessary), either because reviewers are familiar with the contributions of particular editors or because they can see that the number of successful past nominations is in the triple digits (high double digits is likely also sufficient) indicating a high likelihood of high-quality nominations. TompaDompa (talk) 08:35, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 28: Encourage collaborative reviewing

no consensus The discussion has died out and the low participation hasn't helped come to an answer. There are concerns that this really doesn't have much of an effect on what we do since GAR already has second opinion. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 02:37, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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One of the strengths of FA reviewing is that people can play to their own strengths; some people review prose, some people review sourcing, some people review image licensing. If reviewing were itemized by criterion, instead of having one person doing all the work for every nomination, that might help streamline the process. Of course, we don't want people stepping on each other's toes – GA reviewing shouldn't have community members duplicating each others' efforts or anteing the bar up too high – so one reviewer per criterion. I mean, one of the big things we're finding in this discussion is that people aren't doing reviews because it's a really big time commitment for a volunteer project – wouldn't we attract more new reviewers if we allowed people to dip their feet in the water with one criterion or another first, before doing a full solo review? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 08:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - As the GA process is meant to be light-touch, I'm not sure whether this would be the intention GA reviewing. However, I would support an easier or clearer way to request help with reviews if I am struggling with a specific criteria or two. I think the only way I can do that now is via "Second opinion". Maybe that could be more specific - i.e. "Second opinion required for criteria 2"? Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 08:51, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- @Unexpectedlydian: that's the thing, I think this makes the touch even lighter. I would do a lot more GA reviewing if I didn't have to eat the whole steak in one bite. That being said, I would definitely support a half-and-half second-opinion-needed approach as well. Step in the right direction :) theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 08:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support as proposer. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - as a reviewer, I appreciate any comments from other reviewers bringing things to my attention or helping out on parts. I've noticed people are hesitant to do this, and feel like they're 'entroaching' on another reviewer's review. I guess some reviewers may feel that, and they should be able to do solo reviews, and other reviewers (like me) may prefer input, and should be able to encourage it. Some way of signalling this or making it more standard I'd appreciate. I think it's also encouraging to getting newer reviewers - as a new reviewer I remember it being slightly daunting to do a first review and potentially messing it up. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like this, but don't know what the best way to accomplish this would be. We do have many people who feel incompetent (rightly or wrongly) in some area, be it prose quality or image licensing, and if they could review everything else it would be a quick job for a second reviewer to just do the remaining bit. —Kusma (talk) 16:45, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose formalising this in any way that adds complexity, per Chiswick Chap. —Kusma (talk) 15:06, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support in theory I think this makes sense, especially for certain very long or technical pages. A collaborative review process for STEM topics might actually reduce the review time needed for some of our most technical GANs. It could also encourage people to review in other topic areas. But I'm not sure how it'd be structured myself. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 19:29, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Unsure, not all of the GACR are equal in time and investment, and many are related enough that you can get a sense for multiple by looking at the same text and sources, so I'm not sure a split by criteria approach is that helpful. I would support dropping more third-party comments onto GANs, which I have done in the past (also on talkpages when a GAN has not been opened yet), but these should be within the purview of the reviewer to disagree with and the passing of the criteria should remain with the reviewer. CMD (talk) 01:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Chipmunkdavis: I mean, sure, but anyone is free to volunteer a whole nomination, at which point the system basically reverts. Why not allow people to break down bigger nominations into chunks? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 01:33, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A broken up review still requires someone to come in and say "I will own this review" and either pass or fail it, so you still need an ultimate reviewer. Separately, the community has now decided that review numbers matter and have value, and this complicates that. Lastly, I have anecdotally found that requesting second opinions is unfruitful, with even more extensive wait time, and this feels like it would enhance that (anecdotal though, does the data disagree, let me know!). CMD (talk) 01:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How many people would realistically do these co-op reviews, though? We already have an option to ask for a "second opinion" and in my experience those requests get absolutely minimal traction. I think we need to think about a few things before we go ahead with this. Will co-op reviews get enough use to be worth generating an entire new structure/process for it? (Like, if only one or two people are going to do them, I just don't see the point). Structurally, how will a co-op review be different than asking for a second opinion? Would the existence of co-op reviews not make 2o redundant? Also, if it does pass, it absolutely needs to be optional (ie you can flag it as please don't), because I know for sure as a reviewer it would annoy me to no end if someone came in and started doing bits of my review for me without asking. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:27, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Premeditated Chaos: I think that's a quirk of the way GA is marketed – it's very much understood to be a solo nominator, solo reviewer process. It's not like editors are allergic to collaborative review; FA manages it just fine. I think the changes this proposal implements would ultimately be somewhat aesthetic – something that we can use to tell editors "hey, we've got a new thing you can do with GA, jump in and do what you're good at!" That way, they'll feel like chiming in for their piece on a nom is something that's normal, and not a problem so intractable as to require someone with patience and lots of GA competence. We'll need better infrastructure than the current "second opinion" system to facilitate partial reviews, but again – given the existence of FAC, I think this is more than doable. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 12:35, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mildly, I object to the term "marketed" as if the single-nom/single-reviewer style is just branding and not how the GA process was intentionally built. FA is explicitly structured to be a slow, thorough process with multiple commentators whose reviews often cover gaps left by other reviewers (reviews may also harmlessly overlap). FA also has coords who make the end decision based on consensus; if two reviewers strongly disagree about something, it's up to the coord to determine next steps or even explicitly disregard one side or the other.

GA is not structured that way, because it's intended to be light-touch and generally not require the input of several people to move forward. We have no coords to settle disputes and nothing but social pressure to force people to finish reviews. There are, as already noted, existing problems with soliciting additional input via 2o. Because I'm the kind of cynic who thinks about how systems go wrong, here are some possibilities to consider under a free-for-all co-op system with no coords:

What happens if you (the hypothetical GA reviewer you) strongly disagree with someone who chimes in on a portion you left open? Perhaps to the point that you think the article would not meet the GACR if their suggestions were implemented. Can you override them and say "never mind, I'm going to do that criteria after all"? What if the nominator agrees with their interpretation and now it's 2v1? Who decides how to move forward? Are you expected to get another reviewer in to re-review the thing you disagree with? What if now it's 2v2 and you're still deadlocked?

What if you do 4/6 of the review and no one wants to do the annoying bits you didn't want? Who takes responsibility for that incomplete review in the end? Is it fair to leave the nominator dangling because you don't want to do part of the review? Who owns the review if the person who starts it only does a small portion - say image checks or stability checks, leaving 5/6 for someone else. Is the person who picks up the other 5/6 the primary pass/fail reviewer, or is it the person who started the review but only did 1/6 of it? What if no one picks up the remainder, leaving a review with only one thing checked? Do we expect the 1/6 reviewer to come back and do the rest of the review? Or is the nominator now stuck in limbo with an incomplete review?

If primary pass/fail responsibility goes to whoever has the greatest portion of the review, how do you determine that objectively? Are some GACR weighted higher? They should be, because checking for stability takes about three seconds and shouldn't count for much compared to checking for the article being well-written and verifiable. Who's the primary if two reviewers do exactly 50%? Or if 6 people each take one of the GACR and split the review up like a pie? Can someone "overtake" being the primary reviewer simply by writing more in the review?

This is not an aesthetic change, but a revision that would require deep changes to the GA system, making it more complicated and less like itself. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Premeditated Chaos: I hear that, and I appreciate the foresight. I would say that, first, a lot of the problems you bring up are things that could happen under the current system. Reviews are left unfinished and no one steps in; people don't review articles because they don't want to do the whole thing; anyone can object to the suggestions in a GA review if they so choose. I would say that, by definition, if you've left a part of a review open for someone else, you don't really care how it goes. Review credits are an interesting question, but in my view, something that can be worked out if we get to further discussion. Disagreements in DYK noms happen all the time, and they're just worked out (either by the parties or by someone uninvolved).

This isn't meant to be a finished proposal; I was more hoping that GA would affirm the principle of collaboration in reviews, and then discuss exactly how that could be implemented in a follow-up. Maybe we'd do test runs in specific sections, as Sammi Brie pointed to; I think that getting reviewers to work together is definitely worth a try. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 00:27, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, incomplete reviews occasionally happen. But under the current system, that's a bug rather than a feature. The current expectation is that reviewers are responsible for providing complete reviews; leaving a review incomplete is socially frowned upon. A hypothetical reviewer who half-finishes a pile of reviews would likely be warned or even sanctioned for wasting people's time. On the other hand, if we restructure GA to encourage partial reviews, we are removing the expectation and the responsibility of a complete review, and encouraging people to assume that others will take up their slack. I think that will lead to increased problems with unfinished reviews, which is unfair to reviewers.

I disagree that leaving part of a review open in this partial system would necessarily mean the reviewer doesn't care how the rest of it goes - it means they didn't feel like doing it and don't have to. But if someone else shows up and their suggestions are actively going to make the article worse, they may start to feel differently. In theory right now anyone can wander into an active review and object to GA suggestions, but it's generally not done, and it's usually understood that the decision is left up to the reviewer.

Ultimately my objection is that I think this would be a significant change to the existing process that adds a lot of complexity for a minor amount of gain - possible participation from people who don't already review. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:03, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: Well, this is already permitted, so from one point of view, no change is required. On the other hand, encouraging it actively implies a multi-person review as standard, like FAC. That is inevitably a heavier and lengthier process, at least in the direction of the closer-to-a-month-than-a-week of FAC, which is the wrong way to go for GA, which is by intention a light-touch process. I see this therefore as well-intentioned, but clearly illustrating the dangers of overthinking a process - everything gets longer and longer, and more and more complex. I don't want that, and nor should you, whoever you are reading this! Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:41, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 29: Continue with backlog drives, or similar time-limited focuses on reviewing

Strong support overall, this really isn't changing anything, just stating the status quo that most were probably assuming. passes 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 22:28, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Hopefully the changes we are proposing won't result in us needing backlog drives in the same way we have needed them in the past. But, I think there could still be value in allocating certain months where the GA community focus solely on reviewing. There could be associated barnstars or awards for particularly impressive reviews. It could also be a good way of getting new people to participate in reviewing if we phrase it in a friendly "come along and review" way. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 08:45, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Unexpectedlydian: It'd be very interesting if we could make some kind of "GA nomination blackout week" work, where instead of making nominations, everyone puts in a week's worth of reviews? I doubt that goes anywhere, but I think it was worth the spitball... theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:17, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, support... I think the backlog drives are a feature. I suppose there are varying reasons why they work. Personally I suspect a bit of 'competition' and a time-limited event (read: not a 'business-as-usual' thing), contributes to them working. None of this can be addressed by 'permanent changes' proposals - not to say they can't help or that this discussion isn't valuable, but I think the backlog drives are useful. As a nominator I've found them so. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:20, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support continuation of backlog drives so long as the backlog is at least 100 or so. And I hope I'm proven wrong, but I haven't seen any proposals that I think will substantially reduce the backlog. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:32, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support backlog drives are good, overreliance on backlog drives is not so good. (t · c) buidhe 05:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - backlog drives are a good chance to recruit new reviewers and reward reviewing, they should continue at the discretionary pace we have now. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:57, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is kinda a no brainer, but I'm glad someone brought it up. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 18:59, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Good points. Rjjiii (talk) 08:50, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 30: Add a category separating GAs by month and/or year

Broad support for monthly GA categories with no opposition. Consensus also appears to support TompaDompa's proposal of separate categories for delisted Good Articles. Result: passed Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:14, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Most special stuff on wikipedia gets organized by every month of the year. FA has it, DYK has it, FL has it, FP has it. Yet, Good articles don't have a separation by month of the year. So I propose adding categories that separate GAs based on when they were promoted. For example, GAs promoted in December 2022, January 2018, May 2012. It'd be a nice way to categorize GAs and analyze GAs promoted long ago. Onegreatjoke (talk) 02:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support – Seems sensible, and could help us with analysis down the road. Graham (talk) 05:31, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Can't find how/where FAs are sorted, but DYKs are added to categories when they are promoted. If Novem is able to add this to their script, and/or Mike can tweak Christiebot to look at this (could be the same step as adding oldids), it should be very doable without much downside. (Would this be for all GAs, or all current GAs?) CMD (talk) 05:50, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I would expect an article that became a GA in 2014, was delisted in 2016, and promoted again in 2020 to be in three categories: "Former GAs promoted in 2014", "Former GAs delisted in 2016", and "GAs promoted in 2020". That's just me though. TompaDompa (talk) 06:03, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  No, I like this as well. It could be really helpful for someone seeking articles to restore to GA status, or perhaps for producing stats about how long GAs persist before being delisted. We might also want a separate category for "Former GAs promoted to FA", as technically on promotion to FA an article loses GA status, but in a way that is different than a delist-for-sucking. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:13, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is one of those ideas that makes you smack your forehead and ask why we've gone this long without it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:09, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support to help aid in finding GAs, particularly older ones, that no longer meet standards and for other data analysis purposes. The scraping task could take a while but is worth it to bring up to par with other similar projects. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 07:38, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can't see any downside, so why not. Could this be implemented (with talk page categories) just by some magic added to {{GA}} and {{ArticleHistory}}? The info is there, it just would need to be parsed. —Kusma (talk) 09:05, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, I like the idea of making this more consistent with FA and DYK as proposed and agree with the comments that it would make navigation of older GAs easier (especially those past many years ago when standards were perhaps not quite as defined as now). TompaDompa makes a good point about GA articles which have gone through a delist and repromotion and how they should be handled/categorised (I wouldn't even object to former ones listed by year only, even if current is by month); although that isn't strictly considered as part of this proposal, it is a valid comment. Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:48, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support per above Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 15:06, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 31: Reduce WikiProject notifications for GAR

Strong opposition to this proposal, not passed 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 03:03, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Rather than notifying each listed WikiProject for a GAR nom, only notify those projects for which the article is high or top importance.

Support. At the moment, all relevant WikiProjects should be notified of a GAR nomination. In general, these notifications only seem to have the desired effect of bringing uninvolved editors in for more important articles. For most articles the downsides (spam and demoralisation at the WikiProjects, increased administrative burder for GAR noms) outweight the slim chance somebody may want improve the article. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 15:37, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this reduces transparency and increases the likelihood that groups of editors can target a project's GAs without them knowing. --Rs chen 7754 16:45, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I think this should be up to the discretion of the user nominating the article for GAR. For example, I recently nominated Canning Dam for GAR. This article is high or top importance for no projects. I notified WikiProject Western Australia because there are editors there who might want to copyedit and provide help and WikiProject Dams, which is a subject-specific project that would probably be interested in any dam GARs. I did not notify WikiProject Australia because that is a large project covering a lot of articles and can do without being flooded with GAR notices. In short, smaller WikiProjects are likely to want to be notified of any GAR noms but larger projects only need to be notified of high or top importance noms. Steelkamp (talk) 16:48, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree there should be discretion: if you believe it's important to divert editors attention to a mid-importance article, you can still notify the Wikiproject.. I do not think sufficient discretion exists as is: often for a low-importance article I do not wish to distract people from doing important work. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support, please yes! I was just noticing that several WProject talk pages are filled with these notices. Since GAs are passed by one editor, it makes little sense to me to fill WP pages with GAR templates, and the proposal to do so for only top importance seems a good middle ground. Additionally, if the other proposals (eg, get a GAR Coord) pass, and the GAR picks up steam (as it should), it is likely more editors will follow anyway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:06, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose using "importance" for this (this isn't how projects use "importance"). Many articles only have one or two WikiProjects, why should these project not be notified? We could drop the notification completely and rely only on Article Alerts, though. —Kusma (talk) 17:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also happy with leaving notification fully up to the discretion on the nominator, and relying primarily on article alerts. We may lose opportunities to have articles saved that Wikiprojects have indicated are important to them. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Leaving this to discretion ("Consider notifying closely related WikiProjects") sounds perfect to me. No need to ask people to spam project pages with notifications unlikely to be acted upon. A general drive to get more people to watch Article Alerts would also probably be helpful. —Kusma (talk) 17:23, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Femke, to expand on "importance": I wrote the guidelines for the importance ratings of WikiProject Germany 15 years ago. The importance ratings there are unrelated to what Wikipedians at the project care about, they were done more in the style of Vital Articles ("which topics are intrinsically important"?). I've cleaned out the Top-Importance categories a few times since people often mark their own favourite topic as "Top-Importance", but I haven't done the same for "High-Importance", which is full of random stuff (as an example, I just re-rated Anton Maegerle from High to Low). The "importance" data at leats of the Germany project is of too low quality to be used by others. —Kusma (talk) 17:34, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm.. That is true. I do the same for the climate change WikiProject. I would still love for step 4 and 5 of the GAR instructions to be fully automated and have people focus on the article rather than process.. Do you think that is feasible in some way? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:39, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Having said that, I think notifying Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography is unlikely to ever be helpful. Whether notifying the Germany project is helpful depends far more on the interests of the people reading that page than on the "importance" rating. —Kusma (talk) 17:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If all of the Projects that need to be notified on all of the GAs that are deficient were notified, we'd end up with no one reading or engaging because the WPs would be overwhelmed. The equivalent of "template blindness" would set in. See my stats below in this same section; a healthy and reasonable GAR process would see a bare minimum of a 1,000 GAs under review at a time, and the actual number should probably be more like 5,000. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:37, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
~~Support~~ Oppose The idea, but would reword it to the most relavent wikiprojects. Happy to let the reassessor determine that than rely on top importance. On a related note removing the reviewer is probably more helpful unless it is a very recent pass. Aircorn (talk) 00:54, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Current wording already says this Aircorn (talk) 08:09, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The current situation reflects an unusually large number of GARs, and Wikiproject importance ratings are one of the most unused and unmaintained functionalities we have. CMD (talk) 01:11, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think the current situtation reflects a healthy amount of GARs, at least the start of. If we want to ensure some equilibrium where GAs are consistently delisted when they don't meet the criteria anymore, you'd expect this amount of noms. Should we not make the system align with that? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:13, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The current system is what allowed me to see quite a few of the new GARs. I am not sure this change would still achieve that, especially if the new system includes Wikiproject importance, which is basically dead. CMD (talk) 09:07, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the current number is healthy enough.
Of 37,610 GAs as of 2023-01-20 (when I compiled this data), 36 (now 41) were being reassessed (less than .1%). For comparison, of 6,206 FAs, 26 are being reassessed, a further 133 have been noticed and are awaiting FAR, (2.6% combined), and notes have been entered on hundreds more. For FAs, this equivalent number includes only those at WP:FAR and WP:FARGIVEN (those that need to be nominated at FAR, but the regulars at FAR are limited to one nomination per week, so there's a backlog, but the list is there for anyone to nominate). The FA percentage is actually much higher when considering all notes entered so far at WP:URFA/2020, and that editors are regularly combing that list and re-checking.
Even if we disregard all of the reviews started at URFA/2020A that are only at the "Notes" staage, and go with the lowest number like 2.5%, we'd expect to see almost 1,000 GAs under review. Which I think is a reflection of the reality, that .1% is shockingly low, and this indicates that a) a Coordinator is needed, b) the process needs to be easier and faster, and c) notices on WPs of that number of GAs will overwhelm WPs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:43, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we have near enough volunteers to expand GAR to be larger than GAN, as you suggest. Currently, 550 pages are nominated at GAN, and 78 of these are under review. Comparing with FAC/FAR, that would indicate that we could perhaps double the number of GARs, but GAR would need to change to something completely different to allow ten times the volume. —Kusma (talk) 11:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You're preaching to the choir on that score :) Without a healthy GAR, GA status becomes meaningless. Not to single out GA on that, as I always/often say the same thing about FA status. But you have easily/conservatively more than 5,000 GAs that aren't, so unless you at least try to review (ala WP:URFA/2020A), what does GA even mean ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:55, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Does it have to mean all that much? We only allow fresh GAs at DYK, and most obscure GAs don't get a lot of attention by readers. Unlike with FAs, there is no danger that old GAs will be presented on the Main Page as "our best work". I opposed Proposal 21 because GA status isn't all that meaningful. It is slightly more accurate than the other bits of the assessment scale (Stub, Start, C, B) which are usually based on the article from a decade ago and never get updated. —Kusma (talk) 13:18, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's at least somewhat important that it's accurate: reader trust (for the few that notice) and prioritization for editors. For instance, if we have an accurate measure of how many GA compliant WP:VAs there are and this is in decline, it may spur more people to work on them. At the moment, it takes me about 20 mins to nominate an article, only 5 of which are spend on looking at the article/fixing easy stuff. This means that we cannot meaningfully tackle the issue without reform and automation. Femke (alt) (talk) 14:09, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Part of my point is that the vast majority of GAs are on obscure topics (certainly mine are). Making sure popular articles are in good shape is probably more important than checking whether some obscure 1-view-per day article still deserves its green plus. —Kusma (talk) 14:58, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the TFA angle makes an important difference in how much effort we should put into older assessments, but there are other things to consider. 1) In an area like medicine, accuracy matters regardless whether it's appearing TFA. 2) Pageviews at TFA have become less relevant over the years than overall pageviews (for a number of reasons that are off-topic here), and there are many GAs that get more daily pageviews than they'll ever get at TFA. Using medicine as an example, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages#List. I've got quite a few GA pet peeves at the top of that list, but I've got my hands full with reviewing FAs, so can't deal with them. And on that score, 3) as in the case of WP:URFA/2020A, a systematic review process encourages improvement even when articles aren't delisted. It may require a different approach at GA because of volume, but something is better than nothing, and having a Coord with an eye on this ball might further good things. I got boatloads of pushback at FAC when I tried to encourage reviews of old FAs, so URFA/2020 was my Nike "Just do it" moment. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-01-30/WikiProject report for ideas. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:21, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose importance levels are easily changed, should disruptive editing be the target goal for the nominator. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:31, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Importance levels are weird little curios that shouldn't be relied upon when making decisions. XOR'easter (talk) 15:33, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. If notifying WikiProjects is considered too time-consuming, I'm sure that an automated tool could be created that posts the appropriate notices to WikiProject talk pages. Including WikiProjects in the hopes of finding interested editors to address issues found in the GAR remains something we should do, especially as the original editors may have moved on. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:55, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We do have an automated tool already, included in Wikipedia:Article alerts. —Kusma (talk) 16:44, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 31a: Make notifying WikiProjects optional for GAR

Trending towards oppose, there appears to already be enough discretion within the current method. Not passed 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 19:02, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Per above: leave the notification of Wikiprojects up to the discretion of the nominator. Change the text from "Notify major contributing editors, relevant WikiProjects for the article, the nominator, and the reviewer." to "Notify major contributing editors, the nominator, and the reviewer. Consider notifying closely related WikiProjects"

Support as second choice. Would be better than the status quo, but lends itself less to automation that the first proposal. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:31, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, editors should use common sense when making notifications. —Kusma (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support; I will work this into my GAR rewrite assuming it passes. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:37, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice support, works well enough. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:30, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
oppose At the very least one Wikiproject should be notified. Aircorn (talk) 00:49, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, I feel "relevant Wikiprojects" maintains enough discretion, and some should be notified. CMD (talk) 01:11, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Again, I don't see any benefit to not notifying WikiProjects; most of them are dead anyway, so I don't think they'll be worrying much about clutter. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:31, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Via Wikipedia:Article alerts, all WikiProjects are in effect already automatically notified of every GAR in their area. —Kusma (talk) 16:44, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. If the idea behind GAR remains that the ideal outcome is that the article is restored to the level of a GA, then including WikiProjects in the hopes of finding interested editors to address issues found remains something we should do, especially as the original editors may have moved on. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:51, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Better to notify and have it be ignored than not to notify at all; the occasional short section on WikiProject Talk pages here and there is not actually a downside. XOR'easter (talk) 16:26, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. A lot of the problem with WikiProjects is going to be made worse if the usage of them is stopped further. casualdejekyll 00:18, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, to allow reasonable editor judgment. For instance, I highly doubt that notifying Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cold War is going to be of any use for a relevant article - the project is inactive, and you have to go back to March 2021 to get any activity on that talk page that isn't FAR notices or bot-posted discussion notices. We should be notifying active projects, but requiring notifications to projects that have been defunct for years isn't going to be helpful. Hog Farm _Talk 18:10, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose. This is already available to editors, and I don't want a system to exist where it becomes expected or customary among certain WikiProjects who want to apply particular standards to all GAs that may be somewhat related that differ from existing GA standards. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 05:56, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Red-tailed hawk, your comment is somewhat confusing. Could you clarify? For example, this isn't "already available to editors", right now the GAR instructions mandate notifying WikiProjects rather than leaving it up to discretion. Also, in what way do you feel notifying or not notifying WikiProjects will change the way that GA standards are applied? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, I don't want a situation where some WikiProjects expect a notification and others do not; this situation is likely to cause conflict down the line as expectations diverge. If this were a proposal to simply remove the reference to WikiProjects altogether, it would have had my support, since that would have eliminated that problem. The insertion of the word "only" before "among" in my response above may have helped. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 06:27, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 31b: Have a bot handle WikiProject notifications for GAR

no consensus Not much discussion and no one has commented since 1/24. not passed 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 22:36, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Since the above sections say we want WikiProjects to be notified of new GARs, this sounds like a job for a bot. Notify the WikiProjects for which the article is tagged and make the bot respect a "do not notify" opt-out template.

Support czar 04:44, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, to notify all projects, we already have article alerts. Leave additional talk page notices to human discretion. —Kusma (talk) 06:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, This would approximately double the Wikiprojects being notified compared to the status quo (people use their discretion and choose relevant Wikiprojects), and I already believe the current situation in untenable. The other three categories of notifications (major contributors, reviewer, nominator) lend themselves better to automation I would think. A script may let people choose which WPs to notify? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:26, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, per Kusma. I don't think that spamming dead wikiprojects is useful to anyone. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 13:34, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 32: Close new proposals

Passes, the proposal page will be tagged accordingly but discussion here can continue as normal until all proposals are dealt with. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 18:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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As the name implies, this drive does have to close inevitably. I propose we continue discussion here at the talk page but close off Wikipedia:Good Article proposal drive 2023 from further proposals. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 23:59, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose for now, new proposals are still naturally arising from the discussion here. I'm not sure closing this to new proposals is needed at all, but we should certainly wait until the discussion seems unlikely to produce further proposals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kusma (talk • contribs)
Temporary oppose, I think locking the key at this moment is a bit premature, especially when many remain open and have the potential to spin-off sub proposals that are related, but distinctly different to the parent one. I think at the very least, wait until the end of the month so that there has been a full calendar month to make proposals, though i'd wonder if this is something which would naturally become apparent when discussion eases, without need to intervene. Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:53, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, I was very late to this discussion, and scanning down the page of those that have passed and are still under discussion, some very good and much-needed reform is still happening. Don't stop now; as consensus forms, individual items are being closed off anyway, and the structure of the page is conducive to not getting bogged down. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:03, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support The newest proposals are not getting much input anymore, and the newest proposal is a week old. Time to wind this down and celebrate the improvements made :). Femke (alt) (talk) 09:22, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support essentially per Femke. This has been very productive but it's clearly winding down now and we should finish up the remaining open proposals and call this complete. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:34, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think the drive has reached its natural end. Will start closing proposals again. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:49, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think the new month will be enough, I'll wait for a few more people then close it down. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 05:40, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, I think this process has achieved a lot. There is nothing stopping new proposals being made in the usual fashion, and we should consolidate and implement what has been agreed upon here (and discuss those such as Proposal 24 that may need further separate discussion) and then take stock of where we are. CMD (talk) 05:49, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. There is still productive discussion going on following new proposals, so there is no reason to close yet. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 05:54, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This page has become much less active than it was at the beginning, and it's not like we can't change anything else after this is over. In the meantime, we have a lot to work with here. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:56, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Per Thebiguglyalien. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:03, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 17:56, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 33: Post a monthly review digest to WikiProjects

Facing significant opposition, this proposal does not pass. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:51, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Have a bot post a monthly digest of open reviews associated with each WikiProject to increase review visibility. The bot should comply with a "do not notify" opt-out template.

Support. WikiProject talk pages function best as topical noticeboards. This is the sort of regular posting that gives reason for watchlisting and breathes life into those pages. WT:VG runs these types of threads perennially and it brings positive attention to outstanding reviews. I'd include FAs and PRs alongside GANs and GARs but open to any configuration. One a month should be enough to remind without being overbearing, and active WikiProjects should be able to easily opt out via a bot ignore template. czar 04:44, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nominator. This would likely raise quite a bit of visibility for the review systems, even in projects that have enabled article alerts. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 04:56, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This would only work if you extend GARs to last a month. An interim solution might be having notifications groups under the same level 2 header, like Twinkle messages do per month. CMD (talk) 06:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, better to post a reminder to watch the project's Article Alerts. Let's use our existing systems instead of reinventing the wheel. —Kusma (talk) 08:49, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ArticleAlerts could power it, if you're concerned about duplicating effort, but the point of adding additional visibility is acknowledging that our "existing systems" alone are not enough. czar 14:02, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Turning WikiProject talk pages into dumping grounds for notifications seems unlikely to revive them. The people who want to receive these notifications already can opt in via Article Alerts. I take your point that our systems do not work, but the problem is that WikiProjects are dead, not that WikiProjects do not get notified enough. If our systems are not enough, perhaps we need one that doesn't involve WikiProjects. —Kusma (talk) 17:42, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Kusma's right. We're not going to revive Wikipedia:WikiProject Graffiti (to pick an example entirely at random) by posting notifications of GARs at the talk page. Human interaction breathes life into WikiProject pages, not automated notices. We should be using article alerts for this and reducing the amount of project talk page notifications, both to reduce spam and reduce the burden on people trying to do GAR. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 13:33, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Better option - would be the system used at WT:WikiProject_UK_geography, which transcludes the output of User:JL-Bot/Project content which includes GAR. It's always visible on the project talk page without adding more bot-produced content to the discussion flow, and those who are interested can watch the transclusion (WP:WikiProject UK geography/Announcements in this case). I commend it to the house. FlagSteward (talk) 19:14, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support a notice for open FACs, FLCs, GANs, and PRs. It should also include a few helpful links to provide instructions for each type of review. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:28, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is probably already possible to do without bots by selective transclusion from Article Alerts pages (like Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Article alerts). As I said above, I would prefer to encourage people to watch Article Alerts over spamming project pages with notices. —Kusma (talk) 10:15, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. We don't need to reinvent the wheel; as Kusma says there are ways to do this already. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:23, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I think these automated messages are killing WikiProjects. People remove wikiprojects from their watchlist is it's polluting the watchlist. They can watch article alerts if they're really keen. Femke (alt) (talk) 09:24, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I share the concerns above about filling watchlists with automated messages. We don't need to fix something that isn't broken; anyone who wants this information can already obtain it from article alerts. For instance, I keep a close watch on GA activity related to WikiProject Trains, but article alerts already allows me to monitor it, on a daily basis. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:34, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 34: Create a page, Wikipedia:Former good articles, for delisted GAs, similar to WP:FFA

This proposal unanimously passes, as a page titled Wikipedia:Delisted good articles. Participants left specific implementation details open to interpretation, but the advantage of an automated bot for updates was noted. One participant commented that there may be different types of pages potentially listed, such as former GAs that became FAs; he committed to further analyzing possibilities for presentation. Best, EpicPupper (talk) 22:58, 11 February 2023 (UTC) (non-admin closure)[reply]

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.

This is more of a personal opinion of mine but I propose the idea of making a page listing delisted GAs in a similar way to other pages like WP:FFA and WP:FFL. This is because I feel that the way showing delisted GAs through Category:Delisted good articles is pretty cluttered to me. Sure it works somewhat but I feel like it could be done better in the ways that I've listed. Would like to hear some opinions. Onegreatjoke (talk) 19:36, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Should have been done years ago. GamerPro64 13:23, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, this would be 2,860 entries (according to the category), so unsure how those can be coherently put on a page. That said, I don't see the harm in this, although updating it would be a challenge. CMD (talk) 13:46, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, if can be done by a bot (hopefully unlike WP:FA which is maintained by manual editing of the list). Pretty cheap proposal in that it's an interesting stats page that doesn't take up much space. Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 01:08, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Would be useful Qwv (talk) 20:09, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support, a centralized page would be great. I wonder if this could be incorporated into Christiebot. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 20:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support as Wikipedia:Delisted good articles, rather than former. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 20:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:04, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. If it’s too big for one page, we can mirror the structure of WP:GA (subpages for each topic). Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 03:33, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. WP:CLN applies even to project space ideas. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 07:50, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I don't think Wikipedia:Delisted good articles can be the only list page -- there are also good articles that stopped being GAs because they became FAs, and some of those were subsequently delisted as FAs so are neither GA nor FA though they never went through a GA delisting. "Former GAs" could include any article neither GA nor FA that used to be a GA at one time. We could also have "delisted GAs", as a subset. I will think about what it would take to keep the page(s) up to date and see if I can come up with a reliable algorithm. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:59, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 35: Make a contest for empty out GA backlogs

Likely not going to pick up enough votes to achieve support, current discussion is leaning towards opposition not passed 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 18:56, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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A list of GA-related backlogs can be found at https://bambots.brucemyers.com/cwb/bycat/Good_articles.html. Cleaning up backlog as a contest helps editors to stay engaged and it is also a good way to draw attention to improving poor good articles as a whole. CactiStaccingCrane 16:11, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest alternative gamification: the list of GAs in that category is too long to make a dent. I suggest we instead make a page with the ~5% (or 10%) most-read articles for a GA sweep. I've not suggested this here, because we first need to see if the new GAR rules work well. GA sweeps can be combined with a contest who saves the most articles to encourage improvements over delists.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:09, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support in general and especially a small percentage like this. (11,000 vs 550) Hopefully this would also reduce GAR in the future. Rjjiii (talk) 08:48, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support more event and initiative style backlog cleanings, noting that Femke's seems promising. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:55, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Tag removal as part of a competition is poor incentivising. The Wikicup is treated suspiciously by quality processes for good reason, and we have had to have coords checking GANs in our drives for similar reasons. CMD (talk) 02:58, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:04, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per CMD. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:13, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Probably not feasible. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 16:51, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Proposal 36: Fix inaccurate GA review numbers for users whose account names have changed

Discussion has died out. While there was a general agreement that connecting old and new usernames could be achieved, there was no consensus on how it would be achieved. For that reason, proposal was not passed 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 20:14, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi. There currently appears to be a bug with the bot such that it is not accounting for any reviews (or GAs) that a user has made under a previous account name. This is leading to the page erroneously displaying that I have reviewed precisely 0 GAs, when that is not true. The issue lies with the bot that updates User:GA bot/Stats recording reviews in a table based on the username that was in-use at the time of the review rather than the current username of the user who made the review.

Until recently, this would not have really mattered all that much, but changing the order to work with the ratio seems to have made this a larger problem inasmuch as people who have reviewed over >=10 GAs (like myself) are being treated as if they have not reviewed any for purposes of the formula. For that reason, I propose the following:

Until the bot that updates the table at User:GA bot/Stats is fixed to accurately reflect statistics of GA reviews for users who have changed usernames, the sorting of the GA table should revert to being a reverse-chronological order (i.e. oldest-at-top)

. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 06:31, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This seems an unworkable proposal in that we don't have a list of all users who have changed their usernames. Further, people may not want their old usernames associated with their new ones (as much as possible). However, I'm sure on an individual level it would be easy enough to fix per request. CMD (talk) 07:11, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like there would be a way to do this for people who have one account that changes names; the username shown in the contribs would be the name of the current account, so the data's there (and structured). — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 07:32, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The bot has a table of name changes, which I add to manually; adding an oldname/newname pair fixes it for a given editor. Red-tailed hawk is right that the data would be fairly easy to get -- I could simply read through all the users on the review stats page and check if the user page is a redirect, and if it is insert it as an oldname/newname pair. There are also cases where the old user page does not redirect to the new user page; I can't find those automatically but I can add them on request. I've added a handful already, either on request or where I know the old list had merged the names -- e.g. Malleus Fatuorum/Eric Corbett. I can produce the list of redirects fairly easily if we want to see it, but I'd want to see consensus that we should automatically add those. I think it would probably be OK -- the user page wouldn't be a redirect if the user weren't willing to have the accounts associated. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:47, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a list of all the old name / new name pairs that would be created if I were to do this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:47, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would support this. I wasn't aware that my old username redirects to my new, but it makes sense that people who care about it would prevent this and ask the page to be removed. Femke (alt) (talk) 17:08, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would also support this. Thank you for being so quick to respond to this! — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 18:50, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Old name	New name
Gary King	Gary
AdrianGamer	OceanHok
TBrandley	Ecpiandy
Freikorp	Damien Linnane
Sven Manguard	The Squirrel Conspiracy
BenLinus1214	Johanna
Hahc21	Razr Nation
TropicalAnalystwx13	Wxtrackercody
Caponer	West Virginian
CycloneIsaac	Nova Crystallis
LT910001	Tom (LT)
MX	Morogris
Jonas Vinther	Doctor Papa Jones
Tomandjerry211 (alt)	Tomandjerry311
Jmh649	Doc James
Armoreno10	Domesticenginerd
Kncny11	GhostRiver
Arre 9	AJ9
XXSNUGGUMSXX	SNUGGUMS
Lizzy150	LM150
DCI2026	Millelacs
EricEnfermero	Larry Hockett
Ling.Nut	Lingzhi.Random
1.02 editor	Pentagon 2057
LazyBastardGuy	Zeke, the Mad Horrorist
IDV	Alexandra IDV
DAP388	DAP389
Femkemilene	Femke
Jhbuk	Fourth ventricle
Million Moments	M G Tuffen
Ctjf83	CTF83!
Mikemoral	Chaetodipus
Thecheesykid	Aranea Mortem
Drilnoth	AFigureOfBlue
Till I Go Home	Till
Happypillsjr	SunriseInBrooklyn
Kumioko (renamed)	Reguyla
Freywa	Parcly Taxel
StringTheory11	ST11
Paul MacDermott	This is Paul
Power~enwiki	力
ТимофейЛееСуда	TLSuda
Brandt Luke Zorn	Blz 2049
Lingzhi2	Lingzhi.Random
A. C. Santacruz	Ixtal
Fiamh	Buidhe
Lirim.Z	Pixelati
Next-Genn-Gamer	Mr. Wick
Pavanjandhyala	Veera Narayana
Mikehawk10	Red-tailed hawk
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Atomician	Aranea Mortem
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Support additional of a process to associate the reviews, but not making it mandatory. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:05, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Iazyges, what do you mean by mandatory? Do you mean that name association should be on request, individually, and ChristieBot should not add in the name association of everyone in the list above? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:00, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Christie: Yes; given that some people do not wish to associate with their old names, IMO a message should be sent out to the effect that the process is occurring, and people can opt-in; or perhaps it might be more efficient to send the message and allow people to opt-out instead, with an assumption of opt-in for inactive users. Either way. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 10:13, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sending a message out would be tantamount to announcing the name association, which might be what people want to avoid. Perhaps just a notice at the top of the GAN page and the stats page, letting people know to tell me if they want to associate user names? However, I think it's plausible that anyone who doesn't want the names associated wouldn't have a redirect from the old page to thew new one. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:18, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Christie: Sounds good to me. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 10:28, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Disclosure on the current userpage would be a safer bet than redirects, which would have to be explicitly removed. CMD (talk) 01:38, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's the status quo, then, and I would be happy with that -- anyone who wants can request user names to be connected. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:00, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

General Discussion

Although I am not as active as I would like to be with this project anymore, I have been involved in many of the previous discussions on improving GA. I think we need to be careful that any changes we make do not deviate too much from what makes GA unique from other peer review processes. To my mind that is its lightweight approach and flexibility in reviewing. I have always seen this as an easy way to improve articles from both a reviewer and nominator perspective. It has its flaws, but I think we often do better to accept and embrace them than make this something it isn't. FA, DYK and peer review (is it still around?) fill some of those gaps, although they all have their own flaws.

I am going to be contrary to a few others here by saying the backlog doesn't matter. Or more that it is something we should just accept. As long as I can remember a backlog has existed and everytime we reduce it it comes back bigger than ever. The main issue is new nominators who do not realise it could take a while for their article to get reviewed, but that is solved somewhat with the new GAN format.

In fact I think the new format is the biggest improvement to GA in years and hope it reduces many of the issues or perceived issues. I would like to see what that does before making major changes to the format. This is still a worthwhile exercise though.Aircorn (talk) 21:57, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that we shouldn't radically redo GA. That being said, all the proposals, save for #3, seem to be more quality of life improvements than fundamentally altering how GA operates. Proposal 1 is probably the second closest to fundamentally changing anything, but it don't affect the process itself. Let's just hold our breaths for now, we're only 1 day into this.

I doubt there are any lofty ambitions that this will magically fix the backlog, but who doesn't love a bit of idealism. Etrius ( Us) 22:55, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It would be nice if GARs had an easy link to the former GAN (GANs where relevant), much as FARs do (eg. Wikipedia:Featured article review/Andrew Jackson/archive1. I'm not raising this as a proposal right now as we already have a lot and this seems small and uncontroversial, so raising here in case anyone has further thoughts/would be able to implement it. CMD (talk) 07:50, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Those links at FAR are automatically generated (somehow), so it can't be difficult to implement automatically ... just copy whatever is n the FAR template when the FAR is nominated that causes that to appear. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:50, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Chipmunkdavis: the most recent review is already linked; it's the last link at the top (see Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment/Radon/1). I've asked help at the help desk to also get a link to xtools authorship, an other change to make notifications (of major contributors) ever so slightly less painful. I think it's fine to only have the most recent one there, to avoid clutter (but not opposed to anybody making the change). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:53, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reasons for not reviewing

Just starting this discussion as I'm sure it will come up eventually. Do we have a sense of why people don't review GA noms? In my mind, there are three categories:

People who don't review or nominate articles (i.e. no engagement with the GA project).
People who don't review but do nominate articles.
People who do review articles but are sometimes put off by the process.

Focussing on the final two categories, I assume that one reason might be the slightly thankless nature of being a reviewer (a GA is a recognisable milestone and the nominator gets a nice green plus they can add to their belt, whereas a reviewer does not get the same kind of recognition). Another reason is being put off by the intensive nature of checking sources, especially on longer articles (although this is a separate discussion). Personally, I don't review articles in a subject area which I know little about (like science), and I am sometimes put off by very long articles in subject areas that I normally would be interested in. What other reasons do people have? Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 10:56, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have a few thoughts about this. First, from an outside perspective the GA Review problem sounds like complaining that you have so much money that you can't fit the bills in your wallet. I get that it creates a time and software problem, but some of the comments seem treat to editors who create high quality articles as a problem to be solved which seems very backwards.

Second, who do you all want as reviewers? Do you want any editor? Editors with 100+ edits? Editors with multiple years of experience? Editors who have nominated a GA? Editors who have passed a GA? Editors who have passed multiple GAs? Editors who have gone GA to FA? I think a crucial step here, is to identify that group of people and reach out to them. I recently took a stab at reviewing a couple GA nominees. For one of them, the nominator withdrew their article so I kind of looked around a bit to figure out the best way to handle that and really stumbled into this discussion. It seems most of the people here have at least one review, which would mean that the people who are being sought to review articles are not a part of this discussion currently.

Third, the instructions page ( https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_nominations/Instructions#Reviewing ) does not provide a clear step-by-step guide to the preferred way to do a review. To give some concrete insight here as I'm doing my first reviews this week (a pretty serious virus has given me some unwanted free time), I started a review of Tokio ( https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Talk:Tokio_(software)/GA1 ). The article was good but the language in the lead was highly technical and some sections needed broader coverage. I wrote down many specific comments in the review. Then I went back to the instructions page. It kind of looks like I'm meant to place the article "on hold" but that section says and you wish to prescribe an amount of time for these issues to be corrected (generally seven days) which I don't think I do? I'm not intending to set a deadline. It's also not clear if 7 days is a recommendation or a default. Then there are 4 steps. The first 3 steps feel somewhat out of order. Step 3 is first. Then step 1 is actually several steps. I believe I'm meant to replace |status= with |status=onhold, but this was not immediately clear from the "change parameter" language. Step 2 says a bot will use GANotice to let the nominator know that the article is on hold. and that's probably good but it's not clear what this means the link take me to the actual template. The final step is to use a tool to automate the process. (Is this how most reviewers do it?) This alternative isn't really explained. The page says it can perform most of these steps automatically, which is great but which steps? I think this might be the preferred solution, but it dumped me onto a separate somewhat technical page where the first step dumped me onto another different somewhat technical page.

I'll add more soon but this comment is getting long, so let me pause here.Rjjiii (talk) 19:22, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ultimately, it's their (the nominators in question) choice to participate here. There are multiple notices on the various talk pages and an entire tab indicating there is a drive going on, if they're nominating often enough, they'd almost have to choose to not come here. We appreciate the feedback as always, if you have a concise way of putting your concerns, please add a proposal to Wikipedia:Good Article proposal drive 2023. I agree with a lot of your concerns about lacking a proper guide/step-by-step instructions but would prefer not to misrepresent anything you say by adding it myself.

On a personal note, I do think prolific nominators represent a microcausum of Wikipedia as a whole. The flashy achievements, such as GA, FA, etc., attract attention but the less glamorous maintenance work doesn't get any. We praise Wikignomes but rarely reward the efforts. Thus, everyone remembers the 10 GAs you achieved but not the 10 reviewers who took their time to review your work. Its a balancing act, how do we keep high quality content flowing without collapsing GA into a perpetual backlog. DYK has adopted QPQ to cut it down, FA and Good/Feature Topics have so little content moving through them that demand can be kept up with. GA, on the other hand, deals with ~3000 articles annually but as never found an adequate way of dealing with it. On a pure statistics basis, the number of GA nominations annually has remained roughly the same since inception.

The existence of the backlog has been well known to actually dissuade people from nominating articles, since they don't want to balloon the backlog any further. Is it fair for extremely prolific nominators to eat up all that bandwidth from other users without helping clean up? Is it fair that one user performs one GA review for every nomination but has to wait months because another user nominated 20 articles without reviewing anything? If there is a way to entice more reviewers, or find some way to cut down the backlog, we'd likely move more GAs through here. The current system just results in burnout for those reviewing, formerly prolific reviewers have left because this is just thankless work. Without reviewers, WP:GA would cease to function and GA would become meaningless. Its the epitome of a tragedy of the commons.

I know I probably sound a bit bitter and I apologize if it comes off like that Etrius ( Us) 21:21, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Let me first thank you for and refuse the apology about sounding bitter. If the work is hard, frustrating, and thankless, that is understandable. I am not taking how you feel about the situation as any kind of personal statement towards me. I hope that nothing I said sounds like any kind of attack on the work you do.

Regarding a step-by-step guide: if you'd like, I can try to condense my thoughts into a proposal for the drive. I was initially just trying to give insight into what the process looks like for a new reviewer.

And going back again to potential reviewers, I'm having some more concrete thoughts. Is there a way to create a list of potential reviewers by some criteria (at least one GA, at least one GA nomination, or something like that) and then give them a direct notice about this proposal drive at some point? I would be surprised if more than a handful of potential-but-not-actual reviewers knew about this discussion. Rjjiii (talk) 21:56, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think that’s a good idea. It might also be a idea to have a list of go-to editors in event of a backlog crisis like this. I’m thinking this would be more of a optional list. You are asked if you would be willing to put your name down so you can be asked to assist if additional reviewers are required. I’m assuming the proposed list above would just be a list of those who meet the criteria to be in it. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 21:12, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in group three. I don't review as often as I could, and when I do, I review shorter articles. The reason is commitment. Wikipedia is a WP:VOLUNTEER service, and I could just decide I don't feel like editing this week. But once I take on a GA review, then I'm committing to what's often a considerable amount of work in a short period of time, and the work often isn't as enjoyable as other forms of contribution. I try to complete the initial review in one sitting as soon as I take on the nomination simply because I don't want it hanging over me later. Once the initial review is complete, then it's no problem checking up on responses and finishing the review process. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:26, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A few reasons I have come across for people not reviewing is because they don't think the have the skills to cover all the criteria. While I think they would be fine it obviously is an issue for them. Maybe we could somehow have co reviewing as an option? No idea how it would work, maybe just through second opinion, but make it more explicit. Aircorn (talk) 17:28, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ohhh, I like this idea a lot. We have the mentor program that is very underutilized. Etrius ( Us) 18:05, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For sure. And along similar lines, it'd be nice to pair new reviewers with old-time nominators, and new nominators with old-time reviewers (although maybe that already happens naturally—I'd be curious to see data). Ovinus (talk) 19:14, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly speaking, there's nothing stopping this being a thing already, it's just that it's not advertised. I think tying with the mentorship program, getting a new reviewer to come up with a review, then a mentor adding things they would also add would be very beneficial, and something I'd support (and potentially help out when I have time). Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:36, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The GAN ecosystem heavily relies on page creators to infer the nominator, the reviewer etc.. which implies that it should be done individually. Most comments/feedback are not signed, which also works with a solo reviewer, but less well with multiple reviewers.

I think adding additional template parameters like |supporting_reviewers = which could link to one or more additional users would make it more explicit/give credit, while not changing the tooling/bots too much. Anyone looking at an old review, could then see who was involved in a discussion without searching through the comments. Of course, even without this change, multiple people can give input, but at end of the day, only one person deems whether to grant GA status, which does obfuscate the collaborative potential. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 23:23, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ultimately at FAC, it's the coordinator who decides to promote or not, and I don't think anyone there feels that their collaboration has been obfuscated. GA needs to remain lightweight, and there are no coords - the main reviewer should remain the one who takes the responsibility to pass or not. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Another factor is that it feels bad to fail someone! Marking a review as a fail is no fun at the best of times, and can lead to a dispute and a bit of abuse at the worst. Putting that on your shoulders as a random individual, especially one not used to GA, is a lot. CMD (talk) 02:31, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
CMD, you hit it right on the head. I love passing GAs, it makes my work feel worthwhile. It's disheartening to spend hours giving thorough reviews only for the page to fail. I felt particularly gutted failing Lindley Hall Farm, there was a source that laid out the page perfectly and it's always sad to think about what the page could be.

It's especially fun when they start insulting for not passing the article. A lot of editors, even prolific ones, take it as a personal attack. Etrius ( Us) 03:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Back in the day, we were usually careful to say that some noms simply "weren't listed", and that this wasn't really a failure. Noms can always re-nom, especially if they feel like the reviewer was incorrect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- On the flip side, I worry about passing a nomination that should not have been passed, making me reluctant to review nominations if I'm not either (1) able to tell from a quick look at the article that the nomination should be closed as unsuccessful, or (2) sufficiently familiar with the topic that I feel reasonably confident that I'll be able to spot any disqualifying issues. TompaDompa (talk) 04:33, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  I’m the same, I often review articles in a topic I’m familiar with (Football BLP’s), and can find it a bit daunting when confronted with a topic I’m unfamiliar with. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 08:58, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  That is true of a lot of editors. It is perfectly fine, but I think there is merit in having someone who knows little about a subject review an article. If it is understandable to a lay person it is better for a general encyclopaedia. It also prevents circular enforcement of standards that can sometimes happen. Not sure how to encourage that more though. Aircorn (talk) 09:29, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  I feel the concern about not knowing enough, yet I agree with this. There are topic areas where a lack of exposure to standards and guidelines perspectives from other areas has been a problem. Bringing TV stations pages to the general editing population has led to significant across-the-board improvements in verbiage and formatting. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 21:39, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  It's also possible to end up involved in a large number of articles where one imagines one has some useful knowledge, so one can't review there, ... leaving all the many areas where one doesn't edit and it is quite obvious one is a fish out of water ... Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:29, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  That's also me. Of the 100+ GAs I've reviewed, only one was another broadcast station, TV Bahia in Brazil. And that GAN from a mostly ptwiki contributor needed help in conforming to enwiki expectations and with translation; it also had the single largest copyediting need load of any GAN I've ever done. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 21:50, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  
  @TompaDompa, @REDMAN 2019, @Sammi Brie: if you don't feel comfortable with an area, would you feel comfortable helping out a reviewer? Sometimes it's nice to have a third person spontaneously join a review, and if you did that in a new subject area a few times, maybe you'd pick up enough background to feel more comfortable with reviewing some on your own. What do you think? Am I overly optimistic? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:30, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  WhatamIdoing, I probably won’t be available for GA reviews for the next couple of months or so due to something I working on in real life but when I’m around I would be happy to assist in other reviews like that. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 16:21, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think the main issue preventing me personally from doing more reviews is checking sources. If there were more information on best practices for this and how to do it the most efficiently, I would probably review more nominations. It's really tough to gauge what level of scrutiny I should be applying for source checks, reliability, original research, and so on, and I'm not sure if any of the current proposals really address this directly. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:29, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
When you mention level of scrutiny, are you referring to scrutiny of a single source, the general scrutiny of all sources, or other/both? CMD (talk) 17:59, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Both. I think there should be clearer instructions of what you're looking for and how to look for it, but also how much effort you should put into looking for it. Proposal 2 touches on this latter aspect a little bit, but there's still a lot of discretion that leaves me wondering whether I've done it right, and I assume I'm not alone in that. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:22, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Review discovery

Which surface/pages do most reviewers use to find new articles for review? WP:GAN? WikiProject article alerts? Something else? czar 06:53, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WP:GAN for me and also Backlog drives ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:10, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GAN for me too. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 15:26, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Almost always through WP:GAN. — Bilorv (talk) 15:35, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also WP:GAN. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 15:39, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GAN although I used to see some at the WP:LFC page but don’t check it that much now. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 17:13, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GAN, along with article alerts. In particular I watch what gets nominated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Article alerts. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:51, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GAN. Article alerts aren't relevant in my subfield where I am the dominant contributor of GANs. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 19:09, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
GAN, usually the regular list but occasionally the annotated fancy list. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:05, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've been using Mike Christie's awesome sortable list: User:ChristieBot/SortableGANoms. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:11, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That list is not currently being maintained by the bot, though I plan to start that up again when I can. Of course so many nominations are old that it will be a while before it stops being useful. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Almost always WP:GAN except during backlog drives, when I might also look at the backlog drive's list of old nominations. —Kusma (talk) 10:44, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GAN --Vacant0 (talk) 17:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I review in bursts, and have usually used the backlog report to pick the oldest nominations, rather than going directly to GAN. That's what gave me the idea for ChristieBot -- I wanted another way to pick top priority nominations to review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GAN - Shearonink (talk) 03:42, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GAN if I'm looking for something to review. I see some through article alerts, but if it's on article alerts it's a topic I am generally involved in so I mostly check if it's a quick fail instead of doing full reviews. CMD (talk) 08:10, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I use WP:GAN, and now that the list is not sorted by date, I can't find either the oldest (which might be the most deserving) or the newest (which might be the only one I haven't already scanned last week...) so while I don't at all wish to complain about the amazing amount of good work being done on the whole GAN process, I do wonder if the non-chronological listing is a good idea... Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:54, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Chiswick Chap I think the idea is that the title of "most deserving" belongs to articles nominated by people who've put work into the GA process. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - A very worthy idea, but in my limited recent experience not very practical. I find myself browsing about and failing to find. Of course that could mean there's nothing there that seems suitable; it could also mean the stuff I want is effectively being camouflaged among all the dead leaves that are lying about. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Some ideas that would address this have been raised, but I think it's too early to propose alternatives when the consensus to try this approach is so recent. One option would be to make the lists sortable, so those who wished to could sort by age. A couple of others have expressed surprise at the arrangement so I think this is likely to come up again at WT:GAN. Chiswick Chap, I have a question: if you used to be able to find things to review is it because the newer ones were easy to spot, rather than because the older ones were at the top of the list? I wonder if some GAN regulars might have spent more time looking at the bottom of the lists rather than the top, because they would already have been familiar with the older nominations. If so, the problem for those reviewers is not that old nominations are lower priority, it's that newer nominations are not easy to spot. That's probably fixable via formatting, if it is in fact the issue. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it would help, yes; since both oldest and newest are of of interest. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps bolding the newest ones, until they're seven days old? For the oldest ones, does the backlog box at the top help? It only shows five, of course. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Bolding might well do the trick. The list of five isn't enough, I'd need the oldest few in each section. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:09, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    OK, I might suggest bolding the new ones at WT:GAN at some point soon. I'm curious about why you want to see the oldest ones, which I imagine you would have already seen; is it because in your view the oldest ones are indeed more deserving than the ones prioritized by the new sort order? That is, is it because you disagree with the sort order? I have a good deal of sympathy myself with nominators who have waited a very long time, and in fact most of my reviews have been done by picking from the very oldest, though I expect that will change somewhat (because of the new sort order) when I eventually get back to reviewing GAs. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I think we talked about 'deserving'-ness some way back in the thread. I guess that amounts to disagreeing with the sort order, yes. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:43, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Accuracy of ChristieBot's review counts

Is ChristieBot's review count, as listed at User:ChristieBot/GA reviewing stats, limited in some way? I keep a tally of my GA reviews and it hit 50 today; I've just gone through my Talk contributions and re-counted and you can subtract 1 or 2 off that were second opinions but just by page creations of "/GA1" pages I should be much closer to 50 than my currently listed 33. If the bot only goes back to a certain date or the limitation is known then that's fine—both 33 and 50 should get the point across that I'm not a nominator who never reviews—but I wondered what the reason is. — Bilorv (talk) 15:35, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's actually a test page; the live page is User:GA bot/Stats. However, the two pages only differ by 1 at the moment (32 vs. 33). The numbers I use come from Legobot, which unfortunately did not record any information when it updated the count. The bot's baseline numbers come from the state of the page when Legobot was updating it in late October. ChristieBot does keep track of reviews; for you I show Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem on 27 November 2022, and Nippy (Better Call Saul) on 7 January 2023. I can update the baseline so that your numbers change, but I would want to hear from others on whether I can just change those numbers on a editor's request, or if some sort of evidence is needed. In the long term I hope to run scans of old GA reviews that can correct this sort of error, but that's a long way off. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:46, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I hate the be that person but I'm curious about how second opinions should be counted. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 16:13, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

They would be difficult to get right if we do decide to count them -- the bot can get the reviewer from the creator of the review page, but there's no guaranteed way to get the name of a second opinion contributor. Some second opinions amount to full-scale reviews; some are just answering a question that the first reviewer wants to get another opinion on. In some cases more than one person joins in conducting the review after the original review is started. I don't think we can account for the variations; I think we should accept that it's something that is not counted towards review scores. As a digression, I wonder if it would be worth making reviews that need second opinions more prominent on the GAN page -- they tend to linger unanswered for a long time. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:29, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be possible to have the bot notice who the closer is based upon Novem Linguae's GANReviewTool? 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 16:52, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure something could be done -- a log file kept by the review tool, that the bot reads, would work. What would you want this to be used for? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:57, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Honesty, not sure. The script would have to be widely adopted by reviewers before it would be worth tying it to Christiebot. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 19:01, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

a log file kept by the review tool. Have a look at User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/GANReviewTool/GANReviewLog if you'd like. I use this for debugging, but it could also possibly be adapted to this use. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:07, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I don't think we have a use for it yet, but it's good to know something could be made available if necessary. One thing I might do is use that to cross-check the accuracy of ChristieBot's record-keeping -- anything you record should also be recorded by ChristieBot, though the other way round is not necessarily the case. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:01, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've been tinkering around with the data dumps recently. I'll see whether how closely GAN pages created (and by whom) match with the existing counts. The program can also run through all pages' history, so nominations could be comprehensively detected by looking for whenever {{GA nominee}} (or {{GAN}} if people forgot to subst it) was added or removed. Could also guesstimate second opinions by authorship % to the final GAN page. Ovinus (talk) 21:10, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds very useful. Can you test it out on a sample of people on the review count list and see if you can spot any inaccuracies? I know Legobot had some bugs in this area. For example, there was one situation in which an invalid status parameter (I think) caused Legobot to keep incrementing the review count every 20 minutes until the problem was fixed. So we should see some counts go down as well as go up. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:29, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, you can see what I got at User:Ovinus/GA investigations. As an example, Bilorv indeed seems to have made 50 reviews. The AnomieBOT reviews appear to be redirects created due to dash differences, so they can be discounted. Ovinus (talk) 02:52, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's a huge help. I will work tomorrow on a script to adjust the baseline data I took from Legobot to account for the differences between these numbers and what the stats page currently shows. Thereafter it should be accurate. Did you take into account page moves, by the way? E.g. for the AnomieBot ones are the actual reviewers credited, or do those disappear from your count? E.g. would Talk:Construction of the Minnesota State Capitol/GA1 credit Baffle gab 1978 or Mark83 or both? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:16, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Don't use the numbers quite yet; they are based on the 6 December 2022 dump and I haven't taken into account redirects as you pointed out. If you want, I can email you a table of reviewers and reviewed articles (about 58000 lines). There's a more recent dump to use, but I'm going to see if I can get page creation logs from somewhere besides the full history dump, which is unwieldy. Ovinus (talk) 03:44, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I can use the page itself easily enough, whenever you tell me it's ready. I'll work on a script that will make the updates once the data is available. Are you aware of the database that supports WP:WBGAN, by the way? It is also the result of scraping GA pages so might be useful as a cross check, though it does not record reviewers. It's public so you can access it if you have a toolforge account, or I can get you a copy of the data. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:48, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It seems fairly robust, actually ([2]): iterates over the talk page history of all good articles and looks for when a signature was added. The same tech could be used to check pretty quickly for review count, actually; just go through the revisions of each talk page that looks like "GA[1-9]". Much better than what I did.... Ovinus (talk) 04:06, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you do reproduce that work, can you also keep track of the article title, page number, and the outcome (pass/fail)? I'd like to get enough data into ChristieBot's database to make it worth building a query tool, like facstats for FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:55, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Mike, it seems to be doing a fantastic job, and the comments above indicate it's getting even better. My count is low by some 50 co-noms, mostly long ago. What would one do in an ideal world for such things, count them as 1/2 perhaps? I guess it's just the way the cookie crumbles, as they say on the other side of the pond. Thanks for all your efforts on the process and metrics. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:34, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'd originally thought that the fact I had to start with the undocumented Legobot numbers was a problem, but in fact it gives the bot a way to correct inaccuracies. If Ovinus is able to come up with defensible numbers, we can have a discussion here about whether the numbers should be updated; and if we can get to some consensus about how to treat co-noms I'd be fine with making those changes too, again subject to consensus here. All it would take is altering the baseline numbers to which ongoing reviews are added. In your case, it appears that like me you may have suffered from a bug in Legobot that actually inflated review counts -- if you look at Ovinus's results, linked above, you'll see he found several fewer reviews than are currently listed in the stats page both for you and me. But those are preliminary numbers so we should wait; maybe the numbers will end up being higher. Either way, if we're going to take review count as an important number in the presentation of the GAN page, I agree we should try to make the numbers more accurate when we can. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:47, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm, thanks. Ah, then it's probably win on the swings, lose on the roundabouts. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Chiswick Chap: Could you give me a couple examples of the co-noms? I'd like to see whether I can approximately identify them. Ovinus (talk) 00:41, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

These are GANs, not reviews. They were mostly with User:LittleJerry, User:Cwmhiraeth, or both. I guess we collectively nominated at least 100 articles, I think all on animals, which are now GAs or FAs. There is a list at User:Chiswick_Chap/Articles#Animals, items marked "(collab)". Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:00, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The bot is currently saying that I've made zero reviews. Upon further inspection, the table at User:GA bot/Stats updates based on the username used at the time of the review, rather than actually using a user's current name. I'm credited on that page with a good number of reviews, but they're listed on previous names for this account rather than my current name. I'd like to not have a fat big zero show up on GAN—it does at the current moment—it's frankly untrue—and it does not exactly feel good to have one's credits taken away from them due to a technical malfunction. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if the credits didn't affect the rankings, but I'm a bit frustrated that the inaccuracy is pushing my GA nom to the bottom of the barrel for the sole reason that the bot is incorrectly programmed. Proposal #36 offers a solution to this—to revert back to a reverse-chronological order until the bot is fixed—and I think it's a wise way to not falsely remove credit from people who have done GA reviews while the fix is underway. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 06:40, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reviews by non-English-speaking nominators

One thing occurs to me as a possible problem with any change that nudges nominators in the direction of reviews, and that's competence in reviewing. Doug Coldwell did not review much, and I think his prose skills did not enable him to be a good judge of what is acceptable as a GA, so I would not have wanted to see him doing more reviews. This is more common with non-English-speakers, though. I can think of a couple of nominators whose work I've reviewed who had a good grasp of most of the criteria, but whose English was not strong and who were not good at avoiding close paraphrasing. In some cases I think I recall helping to push the article over the line by doing some copyedits myself. I don't think this should prevent us encouraging more reviews, but perhaps it's something to bear in mind when choosing what to review -- if I don't think nominator X is a good reviewer, I shouldn't hold it against them if they haven't reviewed much. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:11, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, this issue is bumping up against WP:CIR (e.g. the mess with SpyridisioAnnis back in November). Additionally, I've only had one time where the reviewer accurately understood the criteria but did not have the grammatical skills to bring it to WP:GA criteria. This is why The Guild of Copy Editors and Peer review (if it still exists) are always useful, and perhaps we should be a bit more liberal with referring them to outside help. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 21:31, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Timeframe

Is there a timeframe for when proposals will be assessed and/or implemented? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:54, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if there was a planned time frame, but once we've had a day or so with little or no activity I think it would be OK to start closing these, particularly the ones with clear consensus. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:57, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I plan to start closing the obvious ones this weekend, I'll probably close the entire thing come the end of January. If anyone wants to do it sooner then by all means. The last proposal drive went for a month and a half but I doubt this will take as long. It's ultimately contingent on how many proposals come up and if consensus can be reached. It'll probably take a month or so to full implement all the changes and get feedback. Once the drive ends I'll open up a feedback discussion for how we'll go about implementing changes. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 19:24, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a reason this drive isn't advertised in {{cent}}? czar 17:08, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, not really. The policy is very vague on what does and doesn't go to centralized discussion. Out an abundance of caution, I've added a mention at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). So far I've only closed a few discussions that were overwhelmingly supported/opposed. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 03:02, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Should we be stopping backlog drives altogether?

I won't open it up as a proposal for now given the aim of this proposal drive is partially to eliminate the need for backlog drives. However, it may be the case that a backlog drive is a good way to get the community together and focus on reviewing for a month or so, if we find that there is still some sort of a backlog in the future. Maybe it could be reframed as a GA review month-long competition or something, if the number of noms doesn't necessarily hit the "backlog" criteria. Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 22:38, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any reason to stop them so long as there are hundreds of unreviewed nominations. If anything, we should have one at some point after these proposals are implemented so we can put them into practice and get the backlog moving. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:33, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I am in the minority of thinking backlog drives are a net negative. I see the benefit as far as motivating editors to review, but the backlog always ends up back at pre-drive levels within a couple of months, so I would argue that it doesn't actually achieve anything. The big disadvantage is it can result in poorer quality reviews. Also I am not sure the backlog is such a bad thing. It means editors are using the process and in many ways is self regulating. Look at graphs of the backlog (File:GAN backlog since May 2007.png is old, but the trend is still the same) and they level out at a certain number (admittedly that number is trending upwards slowly). Aircorn (talk) 05:41, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What I'd like to see is how average wait time in the queue has changed over the years. Maybe long time GA nominators anecdotally know how it's trended? Like you said, the backlog in itself is not a bad thing. The problem is that having to wait 3-6 months is too long. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:44, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Aircorn, User:Eddie891/GAGraph is up to date to early 2021, if you’re looking for a more modern chart. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 13:34, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I kind of got into more serious GA reviewing by participating in a backlog drive. They are among the few occasions when we celebrate reviews, not GAs. If we get rid of backlog drives we need something else to take their place. —Kusma (talk) 13:38, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is a solid point and I agree in general - backlog drives might occasionally lead to poor-quality reviewing, but that can happen anyway, and they have clear positives. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:40, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As I said above, this often results in a lot of crummy reviews of short articles. WP:CUP often has the same effect. --Rs chen 7754 01:47, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 7a implemented

I've implemented proposal 7a (flag inactive nominators). If anyone would like a different way to flag them, please say so. I set the "inactive" timer to 21 days; that's easy to change if we want to. I also flagged inactive reviewers; we didn't discuss it but it was easy to do and seems harmless. Inactive reviewers are not flagged if the status is in "second opinion", since in that case there's already a request for another reviewer. I can remove the "inactive reviewer" notes if we don't want them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:22, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think the way you've implemented it is very clear, thank you for doing it so quickly! Unexpectedlydian^♯4 talk^‽ 23:33, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded, thanks for this Mike, I think it's really helpful. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:42, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good. Now we just need a clear protocol for what to do whenever one of those notices pops up. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:25, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, consensus is clearly against expiry of GANs. I suggested 7A to be informative rather than prescriptive. Some people may take Bilorv's suggestion and evaluate the article as a static object. Others may try to seek someone else to implement suggestions, or if they're minor enough, might just make them themselves. Others may simply ignore these noms entirely. I think really it's going to be up to the reviewer. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:52, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 9 implemented

Moved discussion to feedback section. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:58, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback

Any feedback, or coordination of implementing passed proposals, can be discussed at Wikipedia:Good Article proposal drive 2023 Feedback. Once the Proposal Drive is closed, I will create a separate tab for the feedback page. Unless there is any opposition, I will close the drive itself towards the end of January and hope to wrap up pass/fail discussion by early February. Feedback will go till the end of February. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 04:17, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I had wondered why my recent GANs had been near impossible to find, rather than appearing at the bottom of the category where potential reviewers could easily spot them. So, if I do fewer reviews my new nominations will be easier to pick out? Hmm. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:33, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gog the Mild, to be fair, most of your content goes in Warfare, in which everything is picked up fairly quickly, no matter where it is in the pile. Pity the poor souls in Music who are now trapped in mid-table mediocrity. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:50, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. I am not much concerned from a personal point of view. At a push I'll call in a favour. But, as you say, there will be other nominators possibly suffering unintended consequences. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:53, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The presumption behind the change was that having your items higher on the category makes them more likely to be picked up. Is your feeling that the opposite is the case, or is this a Warfare specific thing about being at the bottom of the GAN page as a whole? CMD (talk) 13:26, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the intention, but feel that in any of the busier categories newer nominations now "get lost". I used to be able to scan the bottom two or three noms in each category to see what's new. Now I need to read the whole list, closely, sometimes twice. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:01, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Several months ago I proposed to change the GAN layout to be sortable tables within each subtopic, with the default order the ratio of reviews to GAs. Since Legobot could not be modified, I ended up backing away from that goal and writing ChristieBot instead to take over the GAN functions of Legobot. I would still like to switch to a sortable table layout. Here is a draft layout (not being updated). I was planning to wait two or three months and suggest it again. Does that look like it would address your concerns? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:20, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes. Although I would like to retain the short description as default. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:30, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 22: I like it. Saves a lot of clicking through to articles to see if they're the sort of thing I want to review. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:29, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if it belongs here, but on the GANs summary page, against my latest nomination it states that I have reviewed 175 nomination; this matches the separate tally I keep. It also states that I have nominated 54 (successful?) GANs. This should be 104. The difference is between this and this, ie the 54 excludes the 50 articles which went through GAN and were subsequently promoted to FAs. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:54, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am working on a GA database that I hope will allow us to use the "ever promoted to GA" number if we wish, rather than the current "still at GA" number, which comes from SD0001's bot. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:00, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, the current system does wonders for my ratio, but under false pretences. Peripherally, I have a userbox that states that I have helped promote 104 GANs; but when I click on "104" one is referred to a list of 54 articles. Not, perish the thought, that I am counting. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:09, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Proposal 1: Implement an awards system

Proposal 2: Make spot checking a requirement

Proposal 2a: Specify a minimum number of sources to check

Proposal 3: Adopt "quid pro quo"

Proposal 4: Proposed model reviews

Proposal 4A: Recognize exceptional reviews

Proposal 5: Make the mentorship program more visible

Proposal 6: Limit open GANs per editor

Proposal 6A: Cap concurrent GA nominations per editor at 20

Proposal 7: GAN expiry date

Proposal 7A: Flagging articles with inactive nominators

Proposal 8: Default instructions

Proposal 9: Change sort order of GAN page to prioritize frequent reviewers

Proposal 10: Reduce peer review expectation

Proposal 10a: Set peer review to optional

Proposal 11: Ban drive-by nominations

Proposal 12: Add open GAR listings to GAN page

Proposal 12a: Downsize the role of GAR

Proposal 13: Coordinators for Good article reassessment

Proposal 14: Merge individual and community good article reassessment

Proposal 15: Invitation

Proposal 16: Change backlog box at top of GAN to list new nominators

Proposal 17: Redirect talk pages to the GAN talk page

Proposal 18: Put a nomination banner in mainspace

Proposal 19: Require self-review

Proposal 20: Create pre-review bot

Proposal 21: Make GA status more prominent in mainspace

Proposal 22: Add short description and shorten {{GANentry}}

Proposal 23: Make GAN categories subpages

Proposal 24: Realign GAN categories with a more widely-used categorisation

Proposal 25: Allow nominations to be placed in multiple categories

Proposal 26: Make lots of pages instructing how to create a good article

Proposal 27: Give nominators with a certain number of reviews a minimum sort-weight

Proposal 28: Encourage collaborative reviewing

Proposal 29: Continue with backlog drives, or similar time-limited focuses on reviewing

Proposal 30: Add a category separating GAs by month and/or year

Proposal 31: Reduce WikiProject notifications for GAR

Proposal 31a: Make notifying WikiProjects optional for GAR

Proposal 31b: Have a bot handle WikiProject notifications for GAR

Proposal 32: Close new proposals

Proposal 33: Post a monthly review digest to WikiProjects

Proposal 34: Create a page, Wikipedia:Former good articles, for delisted GAs, similar to WP:FFA

Proposal 35: Make a contest for empty out GA backlogs

Proposal 36: Fix inaccurate GA review numbers for users whose account names have changed

General Discussion

Reasons for not reviewing

Review discovery

Accuracy of ChristieBot's review counts

Reviews by non-English-speaking nominators

Timeframe

Should we be stopping backlog drives altogether?

Proposal 7a implemented

Proposal 9 implemented

Feedback

Proposal 22: Add short description and shorten `{{GANentry}}`