Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

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Good article nominations

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

GAN gone stale

What is the process on a GAN gone stale? All Tomorrows No Yesterdays (talk · contribs) started to take up Vince Gill on January 5, but as of today, has only left one singular comment on the article's quality and the GAN has progressed no further. When DoctorWhoFan91 (talk · contribs) called them out for their slow speed, All Tomorrows started arguing with DoctorWhoFan91, and said, I'm pretty discouraged from editing.I personally don't like being constantly critiqued on my edits and contributions, it feels a bit discouraging. I do have a lot to learn, I understand that, however, I think giving me time to improve and learn might be a better option since I don't really handle criticism too well. Its not like this is an RFA, plus if you have any problems with my contributions, just refer to my talk page. I don't think this GA review is the best place to talk about this.

It seems All Tomorrows is more interested in being confrontational and making excuses instead of moving to progress on the GAN. Is there a way I can throw it back out there for another editor to take on? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 23:11, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Vince Gill/GA1. I'm not sure the GAN is better than the talkpage to raise this, but digging into it it may be worth raising their reviewing. DoctorWhoFan91, was your comment based on just this review or are you aware of a wider history? (Noting their username was Sangsangaplaz:) Two recent GANs are Talk:Kiruko/GA1 and Talk:Seunghan/GA1, which don't really discuss the criteria or check sourcing. As for the current review, my instinct is to raise in on their talkpage, but as they are on wikibreak and thus won't be continuing the review for almost a month more, if there are no objections I'll close the GAN and send the article back into the queue. CMD (talk) 02:14, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

They also have Talk:Dick Simpson (politician)/GA1 in a similar state, and they also had a slow-ish review at Talk:Zug massacre/GA1 at that moment(they have since passed it). I also checked the two reviews you mentioned (they were partially why I checked the review, as one of them was started as the same time as the two. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 07:57, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

I've relisted Talk:Vince Gill/GA1 and Talk:Dick Simpson (politician)/GA1, and dropped a short note to the reviewer. I don't currently have the capacity to look at the already closed reviews, and see if any actions should be taken there. CMD (talk) 16:14, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for closing and relisting them! I have looked at all three, and they are all short-ish, and none has any spot-check. Though I'm not sure if the reviews were fine and comprehensive or not. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 16:21, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Is there a discussion to still have over the GA nominations and reassessments? 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 02:08, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

What do you mean? Relisted GANs can be reviewed normally, reassessments are always a discussion. CMD (talk) 02:59, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Also stale: Talk:The Cock Destroyers/GA1. I addressed @GhostRiver:'s concerns, pinged a few days ago, and I just noticed that she hasn't edited since 17 January. This was one of seven GANs of mine to start their reviews in less than a week and I hit a wall trying to address all of them, so I am very eager to draw under a line under that group altogether.--Launchballer 16:06, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Chipmunkdavis, Talk:Andhra Pradesh/GA3 also needs relisting. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:09, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Done, relisted to original nomination date. CMD (talk) 02:18, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Favre's Dad Game/GA1

I have never had this, but two weeks without a response and the reviewer hasn't edited for 12 days. Anyone want to jump in and do a quick review? The reviewer's review was really good, don't want to waste it. I know there is no rush, but I don't like having open nominations for too long. Any help would be greatly appreciated! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 22:45, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Innactive reviewer

Usually I would wait for the 2+ week mark before going here to address an innactive reviewer, however because of the sheer number of reviews this nominator has open and because of the current backlog drive that is going on I feel it is appropriate to address this now. GhostRiver has 11 open review right now and hasn't edited in 12 days. Some of these reviews have gone even longer without being edited.

1. Talk:42 (film)/GA1 hasn't been edited by GhostRiver since January 7th and no review has really started.
2. Talk:Michael Mantenuto/GA1 hasn't been edited by GhostRiver since January 7th and no review has really started.
3. Talk:Teenagers (song)/GA1 hasn't been edited by GhostRiver since January 7th and no review has really started.
4. Talk:Ripken (dog)/GA1 hasn't been edited by GhostRiver since January 7th and no review has really started.
5. Talk:Macaroni Riots/GA1 hasn't been edited since January 8 and not much of a review has been started.
6. Talk:Johnson Wax Headquarters/GA1 hasn't been edited by GhostRiver since January 7th but it seems like he did start the review.
7. Talk:Luke Henman/GA1 is marked as on hold. The nominator hasn't made any edits to the review page so I'm not sure where they are with this but GhostRiver's last edit was the 8th.
8. Talk:Kinneloa Fire/GA1 is marked as on hold. No edits have been made since January 15th although the nominator seems to have addressed all comments. GhostRiver's last edit was the 8th.
9. Talk:The Cock Destroyers/GA1 is marked as on hold. The nominator seems to have addressed all comments. GhostRiver's last edit was the 12th.
10. Talk:Favre's Dad Game/GA1 is marked as on hold. The nominator seems to have addressed all comments. GhostRiver's last edit was the 12th.
11. Talk:Pascal Dupuis/GA1 is marked as on hold. The nominator seems to have addressed all comments. GhostRiver's last edit was the 9th.

I understand that life happens and sometimes people can't get to Wikipedia stuff. I'm not shaming anyone here I've just noticed that quite a few of the nominators have made comments regarding the status of their review and some of these articles really just need a second look through. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 02:36, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

If there are no objections, we can G6 the ones where no review has really started. Others will have to be looked at individually, while some may have to be reset, some such as Talk:Pascal Dupuis/GA1 look like they can be easily adopted by a second reviewer, it has a detailed review including source checks. CMD (talk) 03:47, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 04:14, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of rearranging IntentionallyDense's list. I'd fail Henman, assess the last four, and reset the rest. I checked her contributions when she opened Talk:The Cock Destroyers/GA1 and Talk:Just Stop Oil Sunflowers protest/GA1 less than a minute apart and I have to say that opening fourteen review pages in 20 minutes was always going to be a bad idea.--Launchballer 04:19, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, I originally planned on listing them chronologically but got too lazy. I'm personally interested in taking over Talk:The Cock Destroyers/GA1 but was waiting for others input on the topic before jumping in. Seeing as I think this is heading in the direction of reditributing these reviews, would it be appropriate for me to just jump in and start reviewing that page? IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 04:23, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Fine by me, although I'm about to head up so whatever I need to do I'll do when I wake up at the earliest.--Launchballer 04:27, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Were you planning on jumping in on GA1 or starting anew? CMD (talk) 05:51, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I was just going to restart the review without asking anyone to restart the page. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 19:12, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

As one of the nominators here (Teenagers), I personally have no objections to returning the article to the nominations list given that no review has been started for the page after what is now over three weeks. How would one go about the process of resetting the nomination, though? Or is it an administrative thing which will be done to the applicable articles in this list en masse? Leafy46 (talk) 02:53, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

We go about it through this discussion and then manual fixes. I'm applying the G6es (G6s? G6's?) now. CMD (talk) 03:21, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Gotcha, thanks! Leafy46 (talk) 03:33, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I didn't apply the G6 to Ripken (dog) as Johnson525 indicated they made some fixes? Macaroni Riots and Johnson Wax Headquarters likely should be reset, although I usually give it nearer a month. Luke Henman probably should be failed per Launchballer above, the nominator last worked on it on the 19th and per another of their GANs it seems they are busy. Kinneloa Fire doesn't have obvious source checks, but GhostRiver seems to usually do these and the review is otherwise complete, so that probably just needs to be adopted for a very partial review. The Cock Destroyers is being taken over by IntentionallyDense. Favre's Dad Game and Pascal Dupuis have received extensive reviews with obvious source checks, so would be best served with a simple adoption. CMD (talk) 03:38, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis @IntentionallyDense: Thank you for bringing up this inactive editor, I wasn't really sure how to proceed from here. I'll leave the decision completely up to you on what you think should happen for the Ripken (dog) article from here, cheers! Johnson524 03:59, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

List of counties in Delaware

This is something that I am recently curious about. There has been a discussion whether the article List of counties in Delaware should be delisted and nominated to FL instead because of the list problematic format. That is, can all list-classed articles may be nominated to GA before nominated to FL, just like how they nominated before to FA? The "What cannot be a good article?" in WP:GACR says the list cannot be GA, so what happened? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:41, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Per the talk page, there was debate about whether the article is actually a list, and in any case it's such an old nomination that is pass is a couple of sentences on the talkpage, so I wouldn't assume any current GA practice went into it. CMD (talk) 03:25, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Stats question

@Mike Christie or someone else who can pull the stat; what was the average age of a GA nominee on December 31st, and what is the average age on January 31st? In other words what impact did the January backlog drive have on the average waiting time for a GA review. Thanks! —Ganesha811 (talk) 06:39, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't know about the mean, but the median age of outstanding nominations (i.e. all nominations regardless of status) was 35 days ot 1:00 on 1 Feb. On 1 Jan at 1:00 it was 48 days. That may not sound like a lot, but (because of the way median works, and because the size of the list has also shrunk) it means that on 1 Jan, 362 articles had been in the queue for more than 48 days, (362 being half), and now half is now 285 and that half way articles has only been in the queue 35 days.

A more usefel metric than average (which can be skewed) might be comparing tha age of the 200th oldest article. On 1 Jan the 200th oldest article had been in the queue 91 days. The current 200th oldest article has been in the queue 52 days. (I picked 200 completely at random). SSSB (talk) 07:54, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, those are all very interesting stats! —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:08, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Questions regarding MOS and verifying sources.

Curtosy ping: TenPoundHammer. I'm currently reviewing the article Vince Gill and I have two questions.

1. Regarding MOS:LAYOUT, Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheadings. does this apply to sections used solely for the purpose of linking other articles, such as Vince Gill#Awards and nominations? I'm asking because the MOS is honestly a huge weak spot for me and while the rationale of having a short section to just introduce readers to the other article makes sense I'm not sure if this is a MOS violation.
2. Regarding verifiable sources, how do we deal with sources where information must be input to get the information? While randomly doing a couple of spot checks I checked [1] which doesn't technically verify the information given. I've run into this before many times and I'm not sure what to do here.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 03:57, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

For question 1, I've always followed advice I was given ages ago, that a section header is an indication of importance to a reader. Our articles have an expected section that exists solely for the purposes of linking to other articles and which readers are very familiar with, it's WP:See also. Suggesting as the current article does that Vince Gill#Awards and nominations is both important enough for a header but not important enough for more than a sentence is incongruous. As for question 2, the instructions for accessing the information are included in the reference, so I wouldn't see it as a problem. It's more accessible than an offline source, and those are fine. CMD (talk) 06:56, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

It's not a random link to a vaguely related article, it's what's left after splitting a large amount of relevant content to a subsidiary article under WP:Summary style. Suggesting that "22 Grammy Awards, eight Academy of Country Music awards, and 18 Country Music Association awards" is so unimportant that it should be only vaguely hinted at by a link to an award article in a see also section is ridiculous. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:12, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

So don't suggest that then. CMD (talk) 08:16, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Both sound logical. Thanks for the advice. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 19:58, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

"On hold" message wording?

I mentioned on User talk:ChristieBot earlier today that I thought the wording of the message that gets left on the nom's talk page when a GAN is put on hold was excessively optimistic: The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed and may be promising more than it should. Mike Christie suggested I come here to workshop some better wording. RoySmith (talk) 02:54, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I believe this stems back to the old expectation that a GAN either passed or failed quickly. A GAN was only meant to be put on hold if all needed changes were minor. If non-minor changes were needed, the article would be failed. I suspect much of what made this break down is the excessive wait time for a review. However, worth taking a survey, how are people using "on hold" these days? CMD (talk) 03:36, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I welcome the idea of a survey. Here is my take: If an article requires only minor changes or clarifications, I do not bother putting it on hold. When I do put on hold, it means something like "The article is not meeting all of the good article criteria, but I am confident that its deficiencies can be addressed with a moderate amount of editing". —Kusma (talk) 15:00, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I basically never use hold mode, but if I was going to, it would be with this rationale. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:06, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

My rationale is the same as the above two too, and everyone I have observed using it also have their rationale lie somewhere between this and semi-minor changes. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 17:47, 3 February 2025 (UTC)