Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 1

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Comments

Hmm, I definitely support this project. I'd like to point out, however, that two similar ideas have been tried (at least, one by me), neither of which ever caught on, and one of which has apparently been deleted. I don't really like the idea of anyone just adding any page to the list, though -- there ought to be some sort of approval process. People adding pages as they saw fit was the original mechanism behind WP:FA, which resulted in a lot of subpar pages being added even back when the wiki had many fewer users and even fewer malicious or short-sighted people. Perhaps there ought to be a separate list page for candidates that anyone could add to, and then they could be approved through some sort of system. I worry that people will say "oh, I just wrote a bunch of sweet articles on exceedingly minor Harry Potter characters, so I'll list them all" and that will require clean-up, generate ill will and make this project less attractive to productive editors. I do support the idea though. --Tuf-Kat 05:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Interesting, didn't realise there had been previous similar pages. I agree with you that addition to the list without approval is not ideal, and if this takes off it would be essential to have an approval mechanism of some sort, although I reckon the simpler it is, the better. I just thought in the early stages it would be good to populate the sections quite quickly. I know of quite a lot of referenced, interesting articles with images that aren't really FA material, will add as many as I can in the next couple of days - hope you and others might think of doing the same! Worldtraveller 23:40, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid that this is rather redundant. We have the FAC process which already requires plenty of attention. By my definition, an article is good if it doesn't have (nor need) any improvement tags, such as {{npov}} or {{expand}}. --Radiant_>|< 13:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but FAC has only identified 0.1% of our content as excellent (and that proportion is shrinking)! I think it would be good to identify many more articles that are of good quality, by a process that requires less attention than the very rigorous FAC process. I wouldn't agree that the lack of tags makes an article good, that just means it's not bad. If you look at my user page, I've got a list of all the articles I've created, divided into stubby ones, larger ones, ones with images/refs etc and then featured ones - the kind of article I'd like to list here would be the ones listed in the third category - ones that are stubby or not much longer than stubs are not yet good, in my opinion. Worldtraveller 09:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I do not think this is a good idea. It's great that there are a lot of good articles, but why must they be reconignized? I agree with Radiant, in theory the good articles are the ones inbetween Stubs, Wikify, etc. and the Featured Articles. It is going over board to identify them. --MechBrowman 01:28, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I can't understand the logic in asking why we should identify our good content. Encyclopaedic standards need to be encouraged, and FAs form only 0.1% of our content. Why on earth would it be a bad idea to encourage people to work towards high standards for a much larger proportion of our articles? Worldtraveller 16:34, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

This project encourages complacency and laziness. Short articles are allowed, if there are objections regarding the length of the article, the person must say what is missing or else the objection is unactionable. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:16, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Does it really make you feel complacent and lazy? It does quite the opposite for me. Regardless of what you say about length of articles, it would seriously devalue FAs if there were hundreds of excellent three paragraph articles on obscure topics. I like working on topics about which lots is known which can make excellent FAs, but it´s also good to work on obscure topics which are not good FA material and make them comply to much the same standards.

"... I can't understand the logic in asking why we should identify our good content." Here's a reason. We readily identify our bad content with {{wikify}}, {{cleanup}} (and several other subtemplates), {{POV}}, {{stub}} (and all of the subtypes there), and for more severe cases, even {{copyvio}}, and {{AFD}}. A little positive reinforcement for articles that meet the criteria on WP:GA but might not yet be up to featured quality is a Good Thing. slambo 13:48, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Another reason: when I've got a bit of free time and am looking for something to read, I sometimes go to WP:FA and pick something that I like the look of, knowing that we'll have a good article on it. Listing articles that aren't quite FA standard but aren't far off would give me a lot more to choose from. I'm sure there are plenty of other people that do this and would benefit from a good article list. I can think of other reasons as well: getting an article to FA standard is hard work, especially for a new editor, and having an intermediate stage would give people a more realistic target to aim at. Also, it will be a great help to experienced editors who are looking for a good article to take to featured standard. File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 20:54, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The concept of identifying articles that are equal or higher in quality to articles in other well-known encyclopedias, yet do not reach the level of Wikipedia's best work, does have merit. At the very least such a mechanism would make things a lot easier for Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. The issue is how to define this level of quality in a manor consistent with core Wikipedia policies, such as WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV, and set up a manageable method for determining which articles reach the standard. Without a the definitions and mechanism to double check compliance this effort is just an exercise in vanity. --Allen3 ^talk 13:17, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I really like this idea, though I think we need to add a system of nominating articles like WP:FAC. I enjoy watching the FAC page and I've seen a number of very good articles rejected for sometimes minor things, not that I disagree with that, but I certainly think the vast majority of article nominated there could make it onto this list. It certainly helps to serve as a stopping place before reaching the pantheon of FA. Of course it also provides positive reinforcement to those working to better the quality of Wikipedia. Just some thoughts. *Exeunt* Ganymead ^Dialogue? 02:08, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Propose that we weaken the "references" requirement

...to something like making sure references are added if at all possible (i.e. if the primary author(s) are still around). But if that is not possible, it doesn't stop the article being good. Otherwise, I fear the requirements are too similar to FAC. --Pcb21| Pete 16:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh dear no. Weaken one of the other requirements if you like but not that one. All articles on Wikipedia should be referenced. Identifying good articles but not encouraging references for them would be counterproductive. We're an encyclopedia. Solid research in our articles is the only thing that can combat the only major criticism of Wikipedia left. Many people know my stance on this but I'll never understand arguments for weaker reference requirements. If a topic simply doesn't have any references available, how would it not be OR at that point? As for being too close to the FA criteria I don't think so, as there is plenty of room for articles that are good and well referenced, but won't quite meet all the criteria. Separately I also agree there should be some sort of approval process to get articles on the list. --Taxman ^Talk 18:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

"If a topic simply doesn't have any references available, how would it not be OR at that point?"

Obviously you're talking about something that I was not, but we've talked at cross-purposes before about references so it's probably not worth both our energies doing the same thing again. --Pcb21| Pete 08:20, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Taxman that references are essential. The provision of references is the most compelling rebuttal to suggestions that Wikipedia is unreliable. I think an article without references can be an 'OK' article, but a good article needs them. Worldtraveller 09:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Obviously a new article written today needs references.

All I was asking for was some way to reward good articles that were written before a requirement for references was instituted. Remember that articles on core encyclopedic topics are naturally the oldest. Wikipedians who wrote them may have left. I suppose the only answer is to re-write these articles. --Pcb21| Pete 12:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Or, you could consider doing some research and adding the references yourself; this is one of the tasks of Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check. I've added references to a few articles that verify the information in the article. Granted, it's easier when the subject matter is familiar and you've already got the reference material, but fact checking and adding references could become another enjoyable task. --slambo 13:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I do do that sometimes (mostly when trying to stop things being defeatured), but I always feel more comfortable putting such works as further reading, writing references opens us to accusations of intellectual dishonesty. (Agreed this is more general references than specific inotes.) --Pcb21| Pete 14:26, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Criteria are the key

Random, disjointed thoughts:

Without carefully selected criteria, and enforcment of those criteria, this list is meaningless. I agree that the criteria should look very similar to those for FAs; this list should encourage the writing of articles in the style of FAs, rewarding such work without requiring the intensive all-out effort called for by FAC voting. I like the description of "what is a good article?" as currently written; the issue is in execution. Comments above point out pretty immediate problems with self-listing; there are many others as well, which could engender lots of unnecessary ill-will. What will be most problematic is the application of these criteria. Does an excellent 3-paragraph article qualify? Does a featured article qualify? Could an article be deemed "too good" for GA but "not good enough" for FA? Is a GA an FA-in-waiting, deficient in only a few relatively minor and fixable ways, or is a GA an "unfeaturable" article?

Examples:

• Argyle diamond mine is probably a picture or two away from being an FA candidate; short but probably passable.
• Calamine brass answers the basic questions but is by no means comprehensive, and is both pictureless and short (3 paragraphs).
• Chinyingi might be the best article on the subject, anywhere, but the topic is so non-notable that it's really only 2 paragraphs long.
• These examples would all fit under the definition of GA so far proposed, but they're so qualitatively different that it hardly seems to make sense that they belong on the same list.

I would suggest an expedited voting system that requires a limited number of votes (say, 5), and automatically accepts or rejects on the basis of those votes. Rules could be that out of the five votes, one "objective" dissent (i.e. "no references") or two "subjective" dissents (i.e. "poorly written") be enough to kill it; otherwise it passes. A question -- how big will this list get? FA is 0.1% of all articles; what are GAs? 1%? 5%? 10%? We're talking many thousands or tens of thousands of articles, which begs the question of whether this list will be helpful at all. I suppose it is useful to encourage GAs as an alternative goal below the effort required to create an FA.... --Bantman 19:46, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your thoughts. I definitely agree with your first paragraph, particularly the point that we should encourage writing in the style of FAs for all articles, not just the 0.1% that are featured.

Thinking about applying the standards, I think good short articles should certainly be listed here. Chinyingi I think would be good enough - in fact, I will upload a picture I took there, and then it will have images and references. Nominally it would meet FA criteria but couldn't realistically be an FA as it's so short - so, it should be a GA instead, I think. I would see GAs as a continuum with FAs so that an article couldn't fall between the two.

I see GAs not really as 'unfeaturable', nor really as FAs in waiting, although articles could be either of those and still good. Post-glacial rebound, for example, is eminently featurable as a topic, but is not at the moment an FA in waiting - it's just a solid overview with a couple of pictures and with references.

Yes, I think the list of good articles should be much longer than the list of featured articles - how large I couldn't say though I would imagine that a few thousand articles would not be unrealistic. If enough articles got listed here it would need to be broken into topic sub-pages.

I like your idea of a rapid approval system. I agree approval is necessary in the longer term, but I think for now, while only a few people are substantially aware of this page, simple addition could work so that we can build up a sizable list quite quickly. When I see Slambo, for example, putting up a load of train articles, I trust that they are good because I know he's written several train related FAs. Worldtraveller 09:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of confidence. B-) You've probably noticed that I've got another article going through the FA process now, Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works. I was hoping to get Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway up to that level by now, but ran out of time. The latter isn't quite good enough for this list yet since even though it has quite a bit of information, many images and a long references list, there are several stub sections that I think disqualify it for this list. --slambo 10:43, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Good Article talk page template?

Since there's mention on the main guidelines about leaving a note on the articles' talk pages when an article is removed from this list, perhaps we should look into a few talk page templates much like those that are used for the FA process...

Good articles/Archive 1 was removed from the good articles list. Please discuss the rationale for the removal and improve the article to such an extent that it can once again be listed, or help this article reach featured article status.

Good articles/Archive 1 is a good article, which means it has been identified as adhering to the quality standards leading to a featured article. If you see a way this page can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, please feel free to contribute.

Okay, we'll need to upload some simpler stars or other images – perhaps a thumbs-up image for good status and thumb-sideways (not a thumbs-down!) or something for delisted articles – to keep these proposed templates from being confused with those of the FA pocess. And, the wording could probably be improved on both of these, but you get the idea. --slambo 20:46, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Looking around on commons, I found these:

• File:Hand with thumbs up.jpg
• 
• 

Not quite what I was thinking of (I thought maybe a cartooney white gloved hand), at least but they're already there. The first of these three seems like it might work for this. slambo 22:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but I always find pictures of disembodied body parts a little disturbing out of context. How about using a nicely drawn green check-mark? --Bantman 23:10, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Some candidates from a brief review of commons:

• 
• 
• 

...not that these are so complicated that we couldn't just make one ourselves. --Bantman 23:21, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I like the ribbon idea better than the check mark. It also lends itself better to a broken ribbon image than the thumbs-up idea. I'd draw one, but I'm not a very good artist. --slambo 15:58, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

What if we use the + and - voting graphics like these:

Good articles/Archive 1 was removed from the good articles list. Please discuss the rationale for the removal and improve the article to such an extent that it can once again be listed, or help this article reach featured article status.

Good articles/Archive 1 is a good article, which means it has been identified as adhering to the quality standards leading to a featured article. If you see a way this page can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, please feel free to contribute.

--slambo 13:54, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Hearing no objections since the first proposal nine days ago, I created {{GA}} and {{DelistedGA}} using the code shown above from the 20th. I have not created any categories for either of them as that seems a little overkill at the moment. Now to start adding {{GA}} to those articles already listed here... --slambo 16:01, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Template on the article page, not on the talk page

In the German wikipedia, good articles, as well as excellent (featured) articles, are tagged direcly on the Article page. The advantage of this, imho, is that it makes readers appreciate what they're reading; most readers who are not editors will hardly ever take a look at the talk page. Furthermore, when there's a vote to declare an article as good, it can be seen much easier on the article page than on the talk page; this is another way of making non-editor readers participate in Wikipedia.

Another advantage would be that everyone would be much more aware of this Good articles project, and thus, more people might get around to contribute to it.

German templates are much smaller and, I would say, more elegant than the English ones. You can see them at de:Vorlage:Lesenswert and de:Vorlage:Exzellent, they just say that the article has been added to the list of good / excellent articles. There are also tags for addition and removal, of course. I think these tags culd be adapted to English with little graphic reworking; perhaps we could also ask their author if we want them.--Robin.rueth 22:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Good idea

I think this is a good idea. I tried to add a talk box above, but couldn't seem to get it right. --Vaoverland 17:09, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Stability

What does it mean for an article to "be stable"? Does it mean that it has remained in a format for some length of time and that there is a lack of frequent large-scale edits? --Anon.

Just means there should be no on-going edit wars. Worldtraveller 22:29, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Image requirement

The image criterion reads "whenever possible, contain images to illustrate it." This can be interpreted two ways - either (a) GAs need to have an image whenever an appropriate image is extant or could be created today, or (b) GAs should have an image whenever a free / GFDL-compliant image can be located, or one could easily be created.

I propose that being "good" but not necessarily "great", a GA should be held to interpretation (b), not (a). That is, failure of a good-faith, reasonably robust search for an existing free image should not be enough to keep an otherwise good article off of GA. If not, and we choose to hold GAs to standard (a), that would require the creation of an image or photograph when no free images can be located, which for many topics would be above-and-beyond the effort that is called for here. Remember, part of the purpose of listing GAs is to encourage good work without subjecting editors to the rigors of meeting FA criteria. So on the image question, I propose that if a reasonable search for free images fails, and the image cannot be easily created, the image "requirement" should be dropped for that particular article.

When I say easily created, I'm thinking about photos of everyday items or easily made drawings, etc. An appropriate image for apple should be easily created, while an appropriate image for, say, a particular mountaintop in Tajikistan is not easily created. --Bantman 18:20, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a little easier to find suitable images than that. The image included does not need to be an image of the article subject, it just needs to illustrate it. For example, the United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company article includes two images: a map of the line's route circa 1840, and a drawing of one of the first locomotives to operate over it that was lifted from the John Bull (locomotive) article. The article on the Weyauwega derailment of 1996 doesn't include any photos (there were quite a few news photos and several diagrams of the accident created, but none with a WP-suitable license that I've seen yet), but it includes a map showing the location of Weyauwega, Wisconsin, (lifted from the article about the town). One of the articles that I removed from GA yesterday for a lack of images, salsa music, now has several images lifted from articles that it references; that article is now back on the GA list. Your example of a mountain in Tajikistan could include a map with a dot showing the location within the country (we've got a country map here, just add a red dot for the mountain's location); other mountain articles use satellite images from the USGS. Even the free will article includes an image showing one of the prominent thinkers involved with the theory.

Of all the articles that I removed from GA in the last two days, there is only one where I cannot think of an appropriate image (appeal to consequences; removed for a lack of references, see the talk page for further discussion) that could be either obtained or created. I think that almost every article on WP could include at least one image; it may be a little more difficult to find/create for some philosophy or mathematics articles, but there are examples for every type of article. All of the articles that I've added to the list include at least one image, and I think a minimum of one image (beyond a company logo) should be included before an article is considered "Good" for the purposes of this list. --slambo 19:18, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

My personal view is that the image requirement should not be that strict. For example, there are no images of Comet White-Ortiz-Bolelli that I can find under a suitable licence. I could add a generic comet image to illustrate it but I´m not sure that that would be helpful. I think it is still a good article without images. I´m much more concerned to see all good articles have references than to see them all have images. Worldtraveller 22:29, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Worldtraveller - a possibly relevant but generic image is of dubious value. I fear that Slambo's approach might lead to an "any image will do" mentality that would actually be to the detriment of many articles. For example, I could easily add the top image from diamond to all the diamond mine articles you removed yesterday, but it's highly questionable whether that adds anything to the article. (A side note - I added those articles just to see what the reaction would be; I have no feelings on whether or not they "should" be on this list, I was just trying to demonstrate the wide variety of articles that would qualify under the presently-defined criteria.) Therefore I continue to advocate interpretation (b) of the image requirement, as outlined above. --Bantman 18:43, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Come to think of it, as a reader I would prefer an External Link to the perfect image that is non-free, than use of a generic but free image. --Bantman 18:52, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

In a sideways manner, I think we actually agree on part of this discussion. An image from a related topic isn't ideal and might not add much to an article; but it's better than nothing. I'm not trying to advocate a strategy of adding generic images over images that more directly relate to the article's topic; I haven't listed several other rail transport articles in part because of the images that are used in them (the two articles I mentioned above are examples of this, I think the images are too generic). My real point is that it can be a lot easier to create images than might otherwise be believed. For articles about events or objects that exist or have existed in specific locations, a map would be helpful. I know, for example, that Riga is in Latvia (I do enough crosswords to remember that fact), but without a map, I have a hard time picturing where it is in relation to its neighbors. For the diamond mine examples, I know where South Africa is, but where are the mines in relation to the country's major cities or to neighboring countries?

Article text can be good even to the point of "brilliant prose"; but without suitable images, the article as a whole falls short of its potential. That doesn't make them "bad" articles, just not what I would consider "good" articles. I don't think dropping the image requirement is a good strategy for this list. However, I will agree to personally be less strict on removing articles simply for a lack of images.

This brings me to one question that I've been mulling over for the last couple of days. Are we trying to encourage article improvement and perhaps eventually nominating them for featured status (which is how I was approaching the list) or are we just collectively patting ourselves on the back for our efforts to create articles of this level? If it's the former, then we should actively encourage editors to add appropriate images or at least add images from subtopics that are included in the article by requiring at least one image (other than a company logo). I saw article progression as something like: idea -> substub -> fleshed-out stub -> good article -> peer reviewed article -> featured article -> PROFIT!. If it's the latter, then those of us who want to be involved need further guidance on how to proceed. --slambo 20:11, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I would see good articles not really as a stepping stone on the path to FA, more an end in themselves, to encourage the creation of high quality articles on all topics. FAC favours narrow topics, for which a comprehensive article can be written in less than 32kb, but I doubt anyone would get an article like science through FAC. Nothing wrong with it also being a stepping stone though, and I've just added the Pleiades which I hope to make an FA one day.

As for images, if a topic can be illustrated, then it should be, I would say, but there are plenty of topics on which a good article can be written for which finding a good image is more difficult. FAC criteria don't insist on an image, so I think it seems unnecessary for GA criteria to do so. Worldtraveller 21:33, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Ironically, I've perused a number of the GA articles at random and found more than a few that are higher quality than many of those going through the PR and FAC processes right now! As for "narrow" topics, History of Alaska and History of Arizona (both recent Main Page FA's) are , in effect, overviews of very broad subject matters. --Lordkinbote 01:21, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Neat idea

I especially like the idea of allowing individuals to list and de-list per the criteria. However, aren’t all featured articles by definition at least good articles? Should they then not be added en masse? However, if the point of this page is to serve as a queue of potential FA candidates, then that may not be a good idea (unless they are IDd by being bold or something but then somebody is going to need to check once in a while to see if the article has been deFAd). Also, I can see this page getting real big fairly fast and thus require subpages and maintenance help from the various portals (each portal may want to have their own good article list). --mav 15:11, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Nah, just confuse things to mark all FA with GA. Let's just assume FA subsumes GA ;-) - David Gerard 23:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Love it.

Finest. Idea. Ever. Can we get consensus on some criteria and start spreading this template far and wide? - David Gerard 23:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Good idea

I really like this idea, so I'm going to start adding a few articles (I've just added David Beckham). I think the text on the banner needs changing: I'd like to see "adhering to the quality standards leading to a featured article" replaced with something like "meets certain standards" with a link to the standards. The way it's worded at the moment sounds a little like it's just fractionally of FA standard, which I think is setting the bar a bit high. File:Yemen flag large.png CTOAGN (talk) 01:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd say going through all failed FA candidates would be a good start - any that missed it by just a bit would be worth listing - David Gerard 10:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Category

Category:Wikipedia good articles contains everything with Template:GA on it - David Gerard 10:46, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Should a Good Article conform to Wikipedia:Manual of Style?

Looking through some of the current articles listed as Good articles, I noticed that several of them listed the sources used under a Bibliography section instead of a References section as recommended by Wikipedia:Cite sources. While I do not consider this to be a major problem, it does raise the question of whether an article should conform to the style manual before being considered a Good Article. I personally believe that all articles should try to conform if for no other reason that the style manual allows for a consistent look and feel across all Wikipedia articles, but if someone has a well-reasoned argument for why the style manual should not be used I am willing to listen. --Allen3 ^talk 13:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I would ditto that. Johnleemk | Talk 14:27, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I concur. — mark ✎ 16:38, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Swamped

Just by looking at the rail transport section I predict that this page is going to be swamped very quickly. My alternative suggestion would be for the various WikiProjects to identify their own articles as "good" and maintain that list as part of the relevant portal. violet/riga (t) 11:50, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

We've got a list of featured articles on the Trains WikiProject page already. It would be pretty easy to add the Good section to that part of the page. In fact, thinking about it more, the list of Good Articles from here could be easily put into a subpage (say Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Good articles) that could be transcluded both here and there so that only one list needs maintenance. This seems like it could lead to a workable solution for all WikiProjects. For topics that don't have projects yet, leave their lists here. slambo 12:11, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Robert Clark (actor)

I read on the project page that "It is probably best to avoid self-nominating articles as this can introduce bias", so I thought I'd leave a comment about the Robert Clark (actor) article here and let others judge if it meets the criteria of a good article. There is a nice free license publicity photo at the top of the article, the fair use images have source, copyright information and fair use rationale on their description pages, the article is NPOV (containing quotes from critics and other people about his work), has notes and references sections to support everything, and there are no fansite links in the external links section. Was the subject of a peer review (see here), but I did not submit it for featured article status as I knew it was too short. Extraordinary Machine 13:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Good articles are bad?

(I moved this from the talk page of FAC, because the debate was clearly taking up valuable space on the talk page. Johnleemk | Talk 08:48, 2 November 2005 (UTC))

Read WP:GA and its talk page. It's for stuff that's on its way to FA or just missed FA. I'd say anything that failed FA by only one or two querulous idiots minor objections should be put straight in - David Gerard 10:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Fredrik has gently pointed out to me that the "querulous idiots" strikeout above, though intended with humour, may offend unduly. I may be a bit bitter over some FAC nominations I've put through ;-) Sorry about that - David Gerard 21:52, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Don't be too apologetic David. As water always the easiest route downhill, a wiki evolves around its problems. "Good articles" has come into existence because FA has slowly become slightly unsatisfactory. A big part of that is the anality of some of the objections. Pcb21| Pete 22:31, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I think the important thing is that as FA nominations attract more interest, true consensus becomes less likely and we need to be more willing to settle for large majorities. I think if we can get 75% support for an article as a FA that should suffice (is this close to what we use in practice?). "Good articles" doesn't seem like a good thing to me; it seems like a way to evade the standard process. The FAC process is what we have for this and the FAC process is what we should use. So I'd say either we should modify the FAC rules/custom or accept that articles will continue to have to meet increasingly high standards. I'm not sure which is the better route. Everyking 04:12, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

"Good articles" recognises that there are grades of article quality beneath 'featured' but still worthy of recognition. I think that's a worthwhile thing - featured article status is tough, and not every article can easily meet it. —Morven 04:44, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

If the objections are minor, why can't you resolve them? Superm401 | Talk 04:14, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Well...go for it. Guettarda 04:46, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't like this idea. If the article is good enough, it can certainly have a run in FAC. Besides, is there some kind of quality control to determine which articles are good ? =Nichalp «Talk»=

None whatsoever. My understanding is that it's a page similar to the old "brilliant prose". Borisblue 05:04, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Not true - there are criteria listed which all articles marked as ´good´ need to meet. Users can´t just list something here on a whim, and if it doesn´t meet the criteria it will be removed.

It seems to me that if an article is better than most, but not quite at the level required for FAC, then it should be at wp:PR|peer review]]. This is merely an "Almost but not quite" club for people to add articles to if they are unhappy with losing an FAC and don't want to do the work to improve their articles. In my opinion, the GA list should be given no offical recognition, if not deleted entirely. Harro5 05:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

There are things that would deny an article Featured status for which Peer Review would be no good. —Morven 05:37, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Such as? We need to be addressing the problems with FAC and not creating a system whereby you whack a tag on whatever you like. Harro5 05:41, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree... I suggest this go to a RFC vote and/or get deleted... Good articles is purely subjective from the readers viewpoint. This should die IMO.  ALKIVAR™ 05:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

If quality were purely subjective, collaboratively writing a quality encyclopedia would be impossible. Let's see if this creates any revert wars; if it does, I'm sure a relatively painless resolution process could be implemented. To address the concern of what use this serves, I think the primary one is that it provides a way to recognize excellent short articles, which are automatically ineligible for FA status but of which there are loads. Fredrik | talk 11:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

It's all well and good talking about it here but those with objections to the scheme should take it to the appropriate talk page. violet/riga (t) 11:48, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I think those who are expressing opposition to WP:GA seem to be misunderstanding its point a bit - please do go over to the page and find out more before demanding it be killed and buried.Worldtraveller 20:33, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not particularly thrilled about this idea. Like Nichalp said, I think this is more a way to evade the standard process. It also seems like a needless diverting of efforting. →Raul654 21:07, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Whatever the approach, Wikipedia should strive to encourage alternative standards and recognition of quality work than those offered here at FAC. For example there is much value in a well-written, referenced, illustrated, but very concise article. However, even a hypothetical "perfect" article would never pass FAC if it were, say, 3 paragraphs long. And yet, such an article would be a valuable contribution to WP, and one worth recognizing. My thinking on WP:GA, which I should note is not shared with anyone as far as I know, is that it should recognize those types of articles - ones that are not highlights of "the best Wikipedia has to offer", but that are excellent, highly polished short articles - ones that could hold their own when compared against a decent, concise Britannica article.

We do need ways to encourage the writing of good articles that conform to certain standards (most notably, referencing), without requiring the herculean effort needed to pass an FAC vote. The difficulty is in establishing the correct criteria. We want to avoid creating a list of "good enough" articles, which failed or would fail FAC for reasons such as referencing, poor writing, or POV. But we do want to encourage articles that solidly stand on their own as a reliable reference addressing the basic facets of the topic, that don't necessarily delve into the details to the level an FAC might. The best way to encourage such articles is to recognize them, just like the FA concept has elevated the expectations of what a great WP article should look like and encouraged the creation of more such articles. - Bantman 21:46, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

It may be a Herculean task for those attempting to get an article featured, but if they sincerely take care of the objections, the article will be featured. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I know; I've written featured articles. The point is that featured-quality articles are not the only ones deserving of recognition. - Bantman 22:05, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes its not rocket science that those who think FAC is working well don't see a need for "competition" and those that don't, do. Kind of amusing to see you write "evade the standard process" - what's being "evaded"? Pcb21| Pete 22:38, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Further improvement of a good article is being evaded. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I think this comment goes to show just how much you are misunderstanding the purpose of that page. Listing on GA does not prevent a listing on FAC. Pcb21| Pete 12:44, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The criteria for WP:GA is too subjective. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:20, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Then so too must be the WP:FA criteria - the two are much the same.

I consider this a breathe of fresh air, the chance to simply point out some good writing, rather than undergo the rather more formal QA review for FAC. Pcb21| Pete 23:26, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Please do read the WP:GA page, Raul and others, and join the discussions there if you would like. It´s absolutely not intended to be ´competition´ for FAC or a means of subverting the process. Our featured articles, the very best that Wikipedia can produce, form 0.1% of our content - GA is about recognising that much more than 0.1% of our content is actually very good, if not necessarily fulfilling all the FA criteria. Worldtraveller 23:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I've sampled Pamir Highway and its far from good. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

You're free to state your problems on talk and remove it from the list. I think one of the good things about the page is that it is actually quite easy to do so. — mark ✎ 20:22, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The critical point here, is what does "good" mean? I listed Pamir Highway because I thought it does a good job in giving a brief, meaningful description of the highway, has a map, links to pictures, is well-written and referenced (disclaimer: I also wrote it from scratch). It meets my reading of the GA criteria, being well written, factually accurate, NPOV, stable, referenced, and illustrated. Obviously it is not in the same league as featured or near-featured content, but it does give a good introduction to an obscure topic, and in its own small way is a credit to Wikipedia. We should encourage such content; the whole point of recognizing "good articles" is to encourage such content through creation of an incentive system. A wide variety of article types can fit under the broad definition, which is fine. We are just saying that by recognizing such articles, we are affirming that they satisfy our basic standards as a source of reference. - Bantman 22:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

That's the problem I'm trying to stress on. It meets your criteria. If I may be allowed to comment: unspoilt natural beauty is written in a touristy language, and friendly native population is a clear POV. Had this undergone WP:FAC we'd have ripped these kinds of phrases off. WP:GA essentially allows an editor to give himself a pat on the back with the consolation that it is good in his or her terms. The criteria for listing in GA is highly subjective, and a bad idea. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:21, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Not to put too fine a point on it: this is a stupid idea. Given whatever set of criteria you'd like (where "Good" < "Featured", I suppose) what percentage of English Wikipedia articles do you imagine should/would be deemed "Good"? 5%, maybe? (Aside: if 95% of our articles are not good enough to be "Good" I'd suggest we ought to be doing other things besides figuring out new ways to pat ourselves on the back). That's Forty Thousand articles, folks. Establishing, maintaining, and arguing over a list containing thousands of articles is simply a big resource suck with a result that is unlikely to be very useful to anyone. Jgm 22:39, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Please, be civil. I´m sure you can express your opposition to an idea without calling it stupid. I am much mystified by the comments of those who think determining how much of our content is actually well written and encyclopaedic is somehow a waste of time. How can a list of articles which meet high standards be a bad idea?

In fairness, I should add that I have the same reservations about the majority of "Featured Articles" (that is, those that never appear on the Main Page) as well. But at least the pages that don't make the MP are usually improved in the process; there is nothing about this "Good articles" process that has such a side effect. Jgm 22:45, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Side note: A look at the bold/unbold links in WP:FA shows that most FA's have been on the main page. Last I heard, we promote an average of somewhere around one a day, so that's not going to change soon, either. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 23:16, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

"...there is nothing about this "Good articles" process that has such a side effect." I beg to differ. When an article is delisted and notes are entered on the talk page, other editors will step up to correct the problems that have been noted (improving the article) and relist them. When I don't have articles at featured quality to highlight in Portal:Trains as the Featured article for the week, I select one of the rail transport related articles listed here to highlight, which brings more attention to them and (sometimes) improvements. Part of the work that I'm doing now is to elevate more rail articles up to at least this level, with the ultimate goal of getting them to featured status (such as Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works which was promoted this week; I would have listed it here, but instead improved it further and got it up to featured status). Incidental improvement does happen, it's just not as obvious yet since this process hasn't been in place as long as FA. slambo 17:10, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

But how is what you describe different from effective use of the existing Wikipedia:Articles needing attention and Wikipedia:Peer review processes, and/or the topic-specific "collaboration of the week"-type efforts (one of which you cite yourself)? I just don't see where a non-arbitrated "Good" badge adds anything to your argument, and it represents significant overhead. Jgm 22:23, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

The featured article on Portal:Trains is not a collaboration of the week; it highlights a rail transport article that is at least up to the criteria for inclusion on this list (there aren't enough featured articles on rail transport topics yet to stick with that criteria alone, but we're working on improving more of them to that level). Here are two examples of articles that were listed here and then received additional improvements: salsa music was listed and then removed for a lack of images, but another editor added images and it is again listed; refrigerator car was listed here and just yesterday, another editor added a ton more information and images to it. There are likely other examples of articles that have been improved, even if only indirectly, as a result of this page as well. The fact that more people are looking at articles with an eye toward improving them, more people are likely to make those improvements. Why not tell them that they're doing a good job in the process? As I stated elsewhere, we readily identify bad content, so why not add a little more positive reinforcement for good content? Different groups of people will look at the lists of articles with {{wikify}} and {{cleanup}} on them, and a different group will look at the articles on peer review. People who find this list useful might not be interested in solely performing cleanup tasks or in supplying review comments. Some people, as mentioned elsewhere on this talk page, just want another list of good content to read. Some people want to take an article from this level and expand/enhance it up to featured status (I'm helping out with TGV right now which meets most of the criteria although it's presently underreferenced). The point is that this list provides positive reinforcement for articles that do meet this criteria, while the other processes are designed to point out what still needs improvement. The Featured article list is the only other truly positive reinforcement process for articles meeting a specific criteria.

The process of determining if an article meets the Good criteria is currently up for discussion, and it's a point that has been open for discussion since this list was created. I would welcome your comments on how to ensure that entries added to the list meet the criteria, as right now articles are added by the person who thinks they are good and they are removed by the person who reviews the entries and makes a decision based on the criteria. slambo 15:44, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Article rating competition

In response to some of the criticism of this process, and remembering previous writing competitions...

I've created Wikipedia:Article rating competition, a proposal for a weekly process by which articles are submitted for informal rating under a given topic. Take a look and feel free to comment on the talk page. violet/riga (t) 17:55, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Process

People seem to be objecting to the current process of anyone being able to list or delist articles here. I only started it off like that to get it underway, and certainly think some kind of approval mechanism could be sensible. Any thoughts on one? It needs to be much simpler than FAC. Sorry, I can´t sign any of the comments I´ve just left above because I´m on a keyboard with no tilde to be found anywhere. User:Worldtraveller.

My suggestion would be to 1)Very clearly lay out what defines a good article. This is still being argued about here. This point is vital. We need to know exactly what to look for as well as what defines Good Articles as opposed to FA's. And 2)I think it would be ideal to set it up just like FAC with a removal page as well.

I came up with an idea similar to this a while back while pondering the problems of Wikipedia. As I see it, this is, in a way, a method of giving ratings to articles which certainly helps in letting people know how trustworthy the material is and this system delineates a path an article must travel from creation to FA status. Carry on! *Exeunt* Ganymead ^Dialogue? 23:11, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Rhythm and blues

Objections (no images, no references) have been corrected. --FuriousFreddy 08:24, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Xanadu House ?

I wrote this article a long time ago, and have been constantly improving it since. So far it has been through three failed but close FAC nominations and one peer review. I think it certainly qualifies as a Good article. — Wackymacs 23:29, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Go for it. --Maru (talk) Contribs 03:54, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Stable versions

Hello. Regarding, good articles, what do you think of Wikipedia:Stable versions (formerly Wikipedia:Requests for publication) -- Zondor 03:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

2% goal

I'd like to see this be a place for the top 2% of WP articles. I don't know that a single page with one link per title is the right way to go in the end; we need to find better ways to view tens of thousands of articles effectively. But a layered system of tagging, something like

0.2% - FA (featured)
  2% - GA (good)
 20% - HA (half-decent)

would be very useful to me -- and likely to reusers looking for a quick cull of good content for specific applications. If we have a rating system set up, its output could be used to auto-generate an HA list. A GA list could be maintained by hand; with O(100) additions a day. An FA list can continue to be maintained by extensive debate, both moderating the list and improving our quality guidelines as time goes on. +sj + 08:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Sj, you may find some of the results of my search for Good Articles relevant to this goal. One source I have been using to find thru the 800,000+ articles on Wikipedia are several Random Pages Tests other users have pedrformed, & I'm struck by the fact that of 10 random pages returned, usually one is "good" quality. (I must emphasize the "usually" because I did a Random Page test for 20 pages, & found none I would consider honestly rate as good.) This suggests to me that 5-10% of all Wikipedia articles may fall into the "good" category; we haven't added them to this list yet because of the challenge of sifting thru the chaff to find the wheat. (Another consistent finding is that 40-50% of articles are stubs -- meaning that a lot of needed improvement on Wikipedia still remains.) -- llywrch 20:24, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

My own feeling when I created this page was that it would be quite easy to build up a list of several thousand articles. 2% would be about 16,000 articles, a figure which may well be attainable if we could just find all the good articles we currently have. When we get to the stage of having several thousand articles listed, we will definitely have to find a better way of displaying them. Perhaps dynamic navigation boxes could be useful? They would allow us to still keep all the GAs on one page but allow the reader to open the boxes they are interested in. Worldtraveller 03:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

{{GA}} and {{DelistedGA}} on TFD

The two talk page templates were just tagged with TFD this afternoon. I voted keep as they are a part of the process we've been working on here. Slambo (Speak) 23:59, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Images 2

I really think that the criterion for images should mention that the images be properly tagged with copyright information. It seems a bit redundant considering that it already is official policy on Wikipedia, but it's worth mentioning. --Jtalledo (talk) 16:10, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, definitely, and adjusted the text accordingly. Worldtraveller 03:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Connections with the Wikipedia 1.0 Project

I wanted to mention that other work on identifying good articles is going on at the Wikipedia 1.0 project. I think much of what we are doing is complementary to the GA proposal. The main assessment method is described here and is based on the WP:Chem system, are the criteria helpful for this project? As you can see from the WP 1.0 page, we have three subprojects trying to identify good articles that are not FAs but good enough for publication. One of these, WikiSort, is linked up with the plans at Meta to automate the article validation process, something people here should be aware of. I think your work here will be very helpful for us at WP 1.0, keep up the good work! Walkerma 06:55, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Chemistry articles

I recently added all of the articles from the WP:Chem Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals/List of A-Class articles. These articles relate only to chemical compounds, and they are the result of work at the project worklist that tracks around 380 articles according to these criteria. I should mention that some of the articles I have added were written or heavily modified by myself, but in every case the "A-Class" assessment was the result of peer review within the WikiProject. Meanwhile over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry we recently began a similar worklist; this is officially just at the proposal stage but people seem to be happily adopting it, so I expect we will be able to provide some more general chemistry articles to the GA list quite soon. Walkerma 07:08, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

This is poor policy

A good policy should have a clear unambiguous purpose and its measures should achieve this purpose, without other unintended consequences. In other words it should 'say what it means and mean what it says'. The Good Articles (GA) policy does neither.

The stated purpose of the GA policy is to indicate high quality in articles that are unlikely to to achieve Featured Article (FA) status. However, the lack of effectiveness of the policy is there for all to see, in the form of the articles that are already listed on the page. As far as I can see, most of these articles could indeed become Featured Articles. On Wikipedia:Templates for deletion, it has been proposed that the templates associated with this article be deleted. Of those that have opposed this move, some have given as their reason that the GA policy will help identify articles that could become Featured Articles, even though this is clearly at odds with the stated purpose of the policy.

The long-term consequences of a policy should be considered. With this policy I forsee 'GA wars'. User A, believing that the purpose of the policy is to identify articles for FA status, nominates a GA for FA status. User B withdraws the nomination, believing that because the article has been accepted as a GA, it must not be nominated for FA, and can cite the wording of the GA policy in support. User A deletes the GA template from the article, thus removing it from the GA list. User B simply reverts this action. The big loser here is the article, because in will be trapped indefinitely in 'GA space'. A longer term consequence could be that the FA process becomes obsolete through a lack of articles for nomination, because any article that might apporoach the standard will already have had a GA template slapped on it.

Alan Pascoe 20:32, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I think good articles in their current state would be unlikely to pass FAC, which rightly demands very high standards. Some would certainly pass with work; others might be perfectly good articles and nominally meet all the FAC criteria, but be very short (eg Boltysh Crater, try nominating that on FAC if you would like!).

As for 'GA wars', if it happens I'm sure it could be dealt with by sensible discussion, but I cannot honestly believe that it would happen. FA couldn't be rendered obsolete by GA; everyone knows that an FA is one of the very best, and if an article can be made into an FA, I doubt many people would be content to merely tag it as a GA. FA also has the lure of appearing on the main page.

Feel free to work on the wording of the page - it's still a developing policy after all, and the more people hone it, the better. Worldtraveller 18:27, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

That, I have just done. Alan Pascoe 20:07, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for rewording it, I think it's much better now. FYI, acetic acid was tagged as GA, but it went through peer review to FA status in October/November, and was on the front page on Dec 2nd, I recently removed it from this list. However the GA tag wasn't even an issue when we at WP:Chem discussed upgrading this to FA. Cheers, Walkerma 00:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

The reason this project currently does more harm than good for Wikipedia

Several reasons have been mentioned already, but one I've been thinking about: I think there'd be vastly less objection to this if it had a list exactly like the current one, but didn't but a huge, brightly-colored template on every single page someone happened to think was "good", and even worse, a meaningless "removed good article" template (is there any actual difference between a "formerly good" article and one that was never "good" to begin with, other than the fact that an editor made a mistake? it's not like these things had strong support for being Good and then later degraded in quality and were formally removed, as is the case with former FAs).

Certainly there's no objection to discussing and working on this Wikipedia proposal, but where it starts to go over the line is where it's spamming hundreds of Wikipedia articles with information (in the form of a big ol' box) that in no way furthers the editing process. Couldn't the "goodarticle" template be converted into a boxless template with just Category:Wikipedia good articles in it, and use the much less obtrusive categorization process to link to other Good articles rather than the box? At least until "Good articles" is no longer a proposed policy, but is an actual, accepted-by-consensus feature on Wikipedia, like WP:FA. Until then, these templates seem like almost like a campaign to force this system on every other Wikipedian (by propagating it all over article Talk pages to advertise this project), when we should just be in the testing phase currently. -Silence 05:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

It's silly. I actually nom'ed the template for deletion and was roundly thumped. The main objections were not addressed, however. I have yet to hear the argument that "good" indicates anything meaningful. If it is to be kept, one alternative would be to re-name it "Potential featured articles." Silence's ideas could also work--I find the template oddly embarassing for Wiki.

Also, can we at least change the template from "...has been identified..." to "...a contributor feels that..." Identified implies that there is a review process where none occurs. Marskell 12:36, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Good points, both. I would support using a category instead. — mark ✎ 12:47, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Deleting the template itself is unnecessary: delete the big, brightly-colored box in the template, and leave the category, so we can then easily change the template (e.g. by re-adding the template) at any point in the future if this project does gain wide enough acceptance and importance to merit putting a big box on every single page that someone happens to think of to add here.

Incidentally, I've been thinking over a few interesting and odd ideas regarding how best to implement "good articles". I'll go into them later if there's any interest. Currently the two most on my mind are: (1) changing the "Good article" concept into what is essentially a Barn Star for articles, a single user's recognition of an exceptionally high-quality article (as opposed to a specific user's high-quality work); (2) integrating the "Good article" and "Featured article" concepts, such as by having the main options on Featured Article Candidates being support ("article is good enough for FA"), oppose ("article is not good enough for FA"), and good ("article is not good enough for FA, but exceptional enough to merit a lesser recognition in the form of a "good article" tag), which would be the easiest way to govern "good" in the same systematic, consensus-based way that FA is, and would have the added bonus of letting people recognize high-quality FA nominees without actually supporting their becoming FAs when they don't quite meet all the criteria or need a bit more work. Just some brainstormin'. But regardless, we should deal with the template issue ASAP, it's really cluttering up far too many talk pages for something so experimental, not to mention so profoundly useless (particularly the "used to be good" one). -Silence 14:18, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't find the large template a problem, since it's on the discussion page (where few people look) rather than on the article page. It's no more prominent than many other templates one sees. I think the template helps get the idea out among the active Wiki community, stimulating discussion such as this! The proposal is important enough that it needs to have some prominence even while testing, if it is buried out of sight that will kill the proposal. The template clearly links to explain what is meant by a GA. I accept the shortcomings of the current system; rather than getting rid of the idea, though, I think it needs to evolve Wikipedia-style into a valuable part of article assessment. Personally I think it needs to have some element of peer review, so it's not just one person's view. I really like Silence's proposal of a good vote; perhaps this could be also incorporated into the peer review process, which many articles go through without going to FAC.

At WP:Chem, when we work on an FAC we probably put in 50-100 person-hours of work; by contrast getting an article up to A-Class (GA standard) might only require 10-20 hours. Yet any of our GAs is worthy to be considered for FA (see ammonia for example). We can't afford the time to make every article FA, hence we have a need for this intermediate level. For this reason I spend several hours a week on assessment issues, for example here, I think there is a desperate need for something like a GA policy. This idea isn't going away – if GA is defeated, it will certainly return in another form in a few months anyway. So let's fix the problems with the proposal, so that it becomes policy and discussions on templates and deletions become unnecessary. Walkerma 17:07, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

The idea has merit but is flawed in execution/vision, IMO. There was a lot of me-too'ing in the TfD debate of the "former GA" template, despite ignoring the real issue of what purpose/reliability it has. Is there a difference between an article that is tagged GA by its author and them removed, and one that actually degrades in quality? I have yet to see that addressed here. The argument that it is sacrosanct because it is part of a proposed policy fails to hold much water with me. I'm sorry I missed the TfD debate because I would have voted to Delete.

All articles should strive for "GA" status; if they're not yet, then they need to be tagged with Stub, Cleanup, Verify, FAC, or some other useful tag. This is just a pat-on-the-back system without any sort of checks-or-balances, as currently proposed. nae'blis _(talk) 18:37, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

So would you also expect any article marked with Stub, Cleanup, or Verify to also go thru a process of peer-review? If not, how do you propose that we avoid edit wars over those tags or deal with the issue that articles might improve without anyone bothering to remove the tags? Without peer-review, allowing anyone to add or remove those critical tags is just a kick-in-the-shins system without any sort of checks-or-balances, as currently practiced. -- llywrch 19:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Peer review, GAC?

One concern I have with this proposal is that with only one person nominating a GA, it is far too subjective. I have been doing quite a bit of assessment work with WP 1.0, and found that people's opinions can vary a lot. Different people use different criteria – completeness, balance, language quality, images, references, etc. This is going to cause problems down the road for the GA concept as individuals go adding and removing GA articles.

I would like to propose that there be two tracks for accepting GAs. These are just ideas, please amend them in ways you think appropriate.

1. For articles that have gone through some peer review (more than one person): by a WikiProject, a formal peer review, or a good vote on a failed FAC (see Silence's proposal above). Such peer-reviewed articles could be accepted directly, if a suitable system can be set up.
2. If individuals want to propose a GA, they would add it to a list just like the one on the current GA page. However this would be "Good article candidates" (GAC) rather than "Good articles." People could have a week or so to vote yea or nay, then it would become a GA. It would be understood that the process should be painless and the article wouldn't be held up to the high standard of an FA.

The general user of Wikipedia is extremely interested in quality/peer review issues (read any Jimbo interview). This would demonstrate to the outside world that the GA tag means something more than "Joe thought this was pretty good". Comments please? Walkerma 17:34, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

A step up, at least. We need a formalized system, going through the current list turns up too many mediocre articles among the good ones (White Stripes, Mauna Loa, Halloween, Jalaa language, to name just a few). The system and qualifications should be just as formalized as the ones for Featured Article are, and it should be treated as a way to recognize high-quality articles without meeting the many strigent demands for FA; in other words, it should help encourage an even high level of quality from our FAs by giving people who love the articles but don't think they're quite FA-level a way to definitively recognize them without voting "support" (though it will also undoubtedly have the opposite effect, as people aim solely for the much lesser "good article" qualifier and no longer bother to try to earn recognition throuh the increasingly tough system of hurdles called "featured article", causing our supply of FAs to dwindle more and more; indeed, this is one of several major problems with the proposal that I expect (hope?) to eventually sink it). It should be made clearer exactly what a "good article" should be; for example, should Rosary, which has some good information but is over half-composed of lengthy lists, qualify? Should Number, which is barely beyond being a stub (its length enhanced by a truly enormous box)? Should Palpatine, an article with the opposite problem (i.e. bloated beyond all comprehension, with a lot of useful information but not the best writing quality and consisting almost entirely of plot summaries)?

In a lot of ways, I really think my other suggestion (turning this endeavor into a sort of "barnstars for articles!" project) would be much easier and more efficient way for this project to work. It would prevent this article from detracting much-needed attention from the Featured Article process and thus slowly killing Wikipedia's main page features (and they aren't doing so well as it is!), and it would solve the problem of trying to figure out tricky "consensus" by simply letting anyone put the image on the Talk page (and on the bottom of the talk page, in a thread where the user can say what he likes so much about the article, not on the top of the page where it won't be scrolled away like other out-of-date comments to be archived), and anyone who feels like it can simply count how many individual "article barnstars" (GAs) an article has received, and use that to determine its popularity and "goodness". It's a popularity contest either way, clearly, since it's based exclusively on what articles the people who happen to like the Good Articles concept like, so at least this way it wouldn't be forcing that very small minority's views on everyone else as though it were the law of the land, but would rather allow anyone who wanted to to either participate or not participate in the giving of "good article" prizes to articles they like; it wouldn't be a constant, permanent brand upon any article that got sucked into this awful, sickening mess.

Though, again, either way, the "no longer a good article" tag has got to go. If you don't remove the big box from articles that have nothing to do with this project other than formerly being listed here, such as by mistake, then I'll have to, for the sake of Wikipedia, the children, and the universe itself. God weeps at that big red minus, so irrelevant and arbitrary, marring so many good articles that aren't "good" good articles. Terrible. -Silence 18:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Some comments

I think we could easily enough lose the 'former good article' template, and just remove the good template where necessary. But I think it's quite inappropriate to call adding the templates 'spamming'. They have received considerable support, when they were listed on TFD, and if you look further up this page you can see David Gerard being very positive indeed about their use. Silence, your arguments about the template make sense, but I do feel that you're trying to railroad us into agreeing with you by threatening to remove tags whether or not anyone else agrees with you.

Potential featured articles? That would be totally redundant. The point of this is not to identify articles that just need a little bit of work to become featured - it's to identify quality content, whether or not it is in the form of an article that might become featured in the future.

Approval mechanisms - bolting it onto the FAC process could not be the only way. FAC is rigorous and hence slow, and we have 700-odd FAs to show for almost 5 years work on Wikipedia. I started this page as a means to rapidly identify the quality content that exists beyond the 0.1% of articles that are FAs.

Criteria - people seem to be saying they are not exact enough, but they're closely modelled on FA criteria. I think rigorously specifying criteria would bog down the process.

Marskell - I have yet to hear the argument that "good" indicates anything meaningful - you must have your fingers in your ears! You've got the project page, various comments here, and various comments on the TFDs explaining what 'good' means. I don't really know what you want to hear.

GAs killing FAs? Can't see that happening at all. What I believe is more likely is that GAs will go some way towards killing the urge many of us feel to create a quick stub and then leave it. I've done plenty of those, but now I feel I'd much rather create something that has at least one image and at least one reference, and then maybe I could list it here. I don't mean to brag but I've written more FAs than almost anyone else, and naturally intend to keep on raising as many articles as I can to FA status.

A system - my own feeling is that what is needed is a wikiproject to manage this page. A small group of people could easily develop consistent standards, and review additions to this page to see if they meet those standards. If we have a 'good article candidates' process the whole thing will slow down enormously, and really it shouldn't be such a slow process to find good content.

And identify our good content we must, if we are not to be seen as a collection of a few hundred well written articles among 800,000 pages of rubbish. The FA process strongly favours articles on topics about which a lot is known - I think GA can encourage higher standards on the huge numbers of other topics which deserve good coverage but are not rich pickings for people who like writing FAs. Worldtraveller 20:12, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Well spoken. To the objectors: there is nothing in this process that stops anyone from elevating an article in the list to featured status. In fact, another rail article, TGV, is poised to make the leap from this list to FA (it's on FAC now, and the votes are currently 4 support, 0 oppose). I would be exceptionally surprised if this list obsoleted the FA list due to the amount of scrutiny that FAs receive during their nomination process. We've previously discussed setting up an approval process for this page above, we just haven't had any concrete suggestions on how to start such an approval process. If your objections are to the talk page templates, please review the discussions above on this talk page and observe that we talked about it here for some time before the templates were created and added to the associated article talk pages. Sure, {{DelistedGA}} could be better worded, and it could include a better image (see the discussion above). What are your specific suggestions for improving this process?

This list is about highlighting articles that are good quality. They have references, they have at least one image, and they cover their topics. As I've stated elsewhere, we readily identify sub-par content with {{cleanup}}, {{stub}}, {{wikify}}, {{afd}} and a whole host of other templates, why not identify those articles that we think are better or that meet a certain level of authenticity, verifiability and readability? Slambo (Speak) 20:49, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Both Worldtraveller & Slambo have said much that I would have said, & there's only a little more I can add. Since I made my statement above about how many Good articles are likely to exist unnoticed on Wikipedia, I've found that the percentage is closer to 4-5% of the total -- a little more than 42,000 articles. As I write this, we've managed to identify only 342 articles; I have a list of 45 more that I am in the process of reviewing, but even if I add all of these to the list, less than 1% of the possible number would have been identified.

Although at the moment I've only been contributing articles that have been reviewed or discussed in one place or another (e.g., the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team lists, former FAs, & random page surveys other users have performed), I feel that the process of selection should remain informal: let a person nominate an article, & if another person feels it is not a Good article, then remove the designation -- but with a constructive critique of the article.

We allow people to mark articles as needing cleanup without a peer review -- & without even a requirement of an explanation why the article needs to be cleaned up. It seems to me that we are supporting a culture of negative criticism unless we set up this category on the same basis. -- llywrch 22:48, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I think by & large I agree with Worldtraveller's comments. I personally don't think that a peer review process would slow things down much at all (it's the high standard for FA that does that, not peer review). However I do see the need to get a large number of GAs out there, and I think Worldtraveller's suggestion of a WikiProject to coordinate that is a great idea. As long as there is some kind of gatekeeper who can say, "No, that isn't a GA" then maybe we can do without a formal peer review. This isn't elitist, anyone with the patience can join the project. I note that Slambo has already removed quite a lot of substandard articles. Is Worldtraveller going to start a WikiProject? If so, I'd love to join.

Meanwhile, I have been convinced by Silence's passionate plea that the "former-GA" tag should go. The "failed FAC" tag is valuable because the failure is a well-documented peer review that is easily accessed. The former-GA tag is only useful if one can access a peer review to say why it was rejected. If the analogy is (as described above) a positive equivalent of cleanup tags and the like, we do not have a collection of tags that say "This article used to have a cleanup tag on it". So, no peer review, no former-GAs. If the tag MUST be kept, it should only be on for a fortnight or so, otherwise many good articles may languish in GA limbo for ages, with people reluctant to remove the tag. Overall I think this is a very valuable project, and I'd like to help in any way I can. Walkerma 15:58, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

However we need some way to indicate to other editors that a given article has been removed from the Good Articles list. If we don't use a former-GA tag, then we need something either like a section in the talk page (say

== Reasons this article was removed from Good Articles ==

& points could be struck thru as they are addressed, or a line in the TODO box -- having a TODO box alone should not be a barrier to an article being added to this list. -- llywrch 18:17, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that former-GA needs to be removed. Until/unless the peer approval process is instituted for this designation, it serves no purposes and provides fuel for an edit war. nae'blis _(talk) 18:26, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I do this on all the articles that I remove from the GA list. It's been in the guidelines to put notes on the article's talk page when an article is removed from the list. After doing this, I found that many of the objections were addressed very quickly and the articles were relisted (as was the case with Salsa music, for example), so this method does appear to work. I'm less convinced that deleting {{DelistedGA}} should occur because it's a much more visible sign of such a change; the wording and image on the template could be improved, but I think it still has merit. Slambo (Speak) 18:37, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't see any use for Template:DelistedGA

{{DelistedGA}} doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to emulate the featured article template cycle. Templates for failed or delisted featured articles are useful because they link to an arena of discussion which indicates why it failed or was delisted. On the other hand, all this template says is "this is an average joe article", which isn't saying much. If someone wants an average article, they can click the random article link. To reiterate, noting "good" articles may be useful because it provides a list of articles which are ready to be corralled into featured articles, while noting articles that are not "good" serves no purpose. I think instead if someone disagrees with a GA listing, they should just remove the template and apply an appropriate cleanup template for the area it is lacking (probably {{Unreferenced}}) or just say why in the edit summary.—jiy (talk) 16:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

The more I read others' opinions and think about this issue, the lack of a link to a peer review is a compelling argument against the template. However, I think deleting it would be premature as we're already discussing (albeit slowly) instituting such a discussion mechanism. Whether it ends up as a WikiProject or nomination subpages is yet to be seen. On the third hand, it could easily be created with better wording, graphics and links once the process is in place. I guess I'm slowly comming around to indifferent on deleting {{DelistedGA}}. Slambo (Speak) 19:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Link with Wikipedia:stable versions

I humbly suggest that this policy proposal be linked with the proposed Wikipedia:Stable versions. In my neck of the woods (mathematics), we've got maybe a thousand articles (out of 12,000) that could be marked as "good", but I am exhausted by the vandalism patrol needed to keep them good. For example, gravity: every science-punk high-school snot thinks they can "improve" this article, and the result is a horrid mix of genius and utter crap that no one wants to maintain. Slapping a GA label on it helps no one, as it will continue to be vandalised, and I'll still be exhausted trying to patrol it. I want a mechanism that will allow me to focus on writing and editing, instead of patrolling.linas 20:51, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Welcome to the collective nightmare. We're all digging holes in sand here. Feel lucky your area of focus doesn't intersect with pop culture. But "Good Articles" isn't really the root of the problem you describe; in fact it is a perfect self-validation tool for all the Gen-Y'ers who can't go a day without being told how great they are, and thus may keep them out of our way a while longer. Jgm 14:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Structure update

Because the History section has grown so large (itmay actually be larger than the Rail transport section), I've transcluded it to its own page, much as the nominations at AfD are done. I hope this change won't confuse anyone. -- llywrch 19:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

What the Heck?

I tried to add a designated good article to its appropriate section. I clicked save page and it showed up on that little subpage that comes up after you edit a section, but when I went back to the main article, it wasn't there. I refreshed the page, nothin'. Then I clicked the little edit link and it showed up on the edit page. I looked at the history section and it didn't show me as having made an edit. Anyone know what in God's name is going on? -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 01:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

This sounds like a simple caching side effect. See the instructions at Wikipedia:Bypass your cache for common methods for forcing a reload of your web browser's cache. If that does not do the trick, the next bigger hammer is at Wikipedia:Purge. --Allen3 ^talk 01:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

It displays now. If it was there from the get-go, I'm fine. I just wasn't sure if it got through or not. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 06:05, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

This page is a bad idea

If any user can tag a page as "good article" for subjective reasons, as it is now, this page is entirely arbitrary and therefore pointless.

• That means things like disputed, cleanup, too technical tags etc. are likewise pointless. This page follows a long tradition of subjective tags on Wikipedia.
• You cannot list an article here for subjective reasons. Just because anyone can list an article does not mean there are not criteria. There are (you can see them quite clearly listed on the page), and they are enforced. There is nothing arbitrary about good articles! Worldtraveller 00:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

If a vote is taken on whether an article is "good", then this page would be redundant with WP:FAC and therefore pointless.

• It has been made very clear to me (a relative newcomer here) that a GA is NOT automatically an FAC. I'm really glad, I listed 28 GAs, it would take me ten years work to get them all through FA! Walkerma 21:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Either way, it's pointless. In particular, please don't put tags on talk pages that "this article is good" as long as there's no solid criterion for that. Radiant_>|< 13:50, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• The tag clearly links here, so that the rare person who reads an article talk page and sees the tag can see exactly what the criteria for "good" are, just as they can with an FA. Let them decide if it's pointless. Walkerma 21:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
• Entirely agree with Walkerma - note again there are solid criteria for GA - they are listed on the page. They are very similar to those for FAC. Worldtraveller 00:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

General discussion

Any user can edit any article, but it doesn't make Wikipedia entirely pointless. Pcb21 Pete 14:04, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia's not pointless. This page, in my opinion, is. Radiant_>|< 14:09, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Obviously you're welcome to that opinion, however your initial message presented it as fact. Pcb21 Pete 16:11, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

People post things on Wikipedia all the time that are opinion stated as fact. Don't get bent out of shape by semantics; you're not actually addressing any of Radiant's concerns (nor, unless I'm missing something, is any progress going forward on those concerns, which have been expressed by many and sundry). nae'blis _(talk) 20:25, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• Hopefully I have addressed Radiant's quite legitimate concerns on a point-by-point basis. For myself, I think these points were nicely addressed above. Some final comments of mine:

1. I don't understand why a GA tag buried on a talk page should bother anyone. It's much less intrusive than a cleanup or disputed tag which I have seen used because someone simply misunderstood the topic.
2. In reality the people here do vet every article listed, just see all the reverts in the GA history. So in fact there is some basic peer review, by one person at least. I would like to see that system formalised, though, perhaps as a WikiProject with "gatekeepers" and other participants clearly listed.
3. This proposal is trying do achieve something very difficult, to find those thousands of decent articles that aren't FAs. I think that the only reason this proposal should be rejected is if someone has a brainwave that is much better. This proposal has its limitations, so it's easy to pick holes in it, but at present there isn't a better a way of doing this. Until there is, this proposal needs nurturing to it becomes a standard part of Wikipedia or gets replaced by something better. Walkerma 21:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• Well, I understand what you're trying to do here and that it's very difficult. My point is that several people have objected to this process. Since it's very difficult, it's quite possible that it'll end up half-baked or arbitrary, and arguably it's worse to have a low-quality list of so-called good articles, than to have no such list. As an example, you cite that only a small amount of WP articles are featured, but at present considerably less articles are called "good". So it's not really that people think you're wasting your time here (indeed, it's your time so that'd be your call) but it's that you're doing something that is not quite accepted as being a good idea, and you're not quite doing it well enough. I would advise seeking a broader consensus that having a category of "Good articles" is actually a good idea and feasible to execute, before continuing. Radiant_>|< 13:52, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Common sense at last! What possible good does it do to continue to add articles to so many pages, when
• (1) the template still takes up a lot of space on the Talk page (the only defense of this has been "talk pages aren't important anyway and barely anyone sees them, so it doesn't matter if some big templates fill them up with nonsense!"; seems to be a pretty weak defense), unlike a box-less category system would;

• Template takes up too much space? Then make it smaller! No big deal, surely. Worldtraveller 00:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• (2) these boxes are explicitly designed as little more than a huge-scale advertising campaign for the Good articles concept, trying to force the idea down the throats of anyone who disagrees with it, since anyone who likes the idea can easily add the box to hundreds of articles, yet the many people who don't like the idea have no recourse whatsoever, and no way to avoid having a pointless template shoved in their faces if a high-quality article they work on is branded with "GA";

• Sorry, but that's just nonsense. The tags are explicitly designed to show that someone has decided that an article meets the criteria listed here for it to be designated as 'good'. Worldtraveller 00:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• (3) unlike every other template currently in wide use on Wikipedia articles and talk pages, this template in no way directly assists the Wikipedia editing process; it has been argued that "we have templates for deficient articles, so why not templates for good articles?", but this misses the entire point of those templates: they exist so that we know in what ways the article can be improved, not just for the hell of it, to give editors more elaborate bureaucratic box-shuffling to help amuse them so they don't have to bother with anything as silly as, say, actually editing the articles to make them better;

• I can see you really dislike the GA concept, but I feel that you're getting a little bit insulting in your criticisms here. It has a very definite purpose, and I've already seen quite clearly that it has encouraged editors to add references and images to articles that previously lacked them.

• (4) in its current implementation, there is next to no real structure or consensus basis for the GA branding, making it functionally identical to a barnstar for articles, except that it's a barnstar that is mandatorily put at the top of the article's talkspace and can't be removed unless it's FAd or another user can prove that it's not "good", with the removal process being equally disorganized and arbitrary;

• There's a box at the top that says it's proposed policy, so it should be no surprise if concensus is still forming. I have to say yet again that just because it's open to anyone to add or remove an article from the list, the process is not disorganised or arbitrary. There are criteria which have to be met for an article to be listed, and if it doesn't meet them it won't stay here for long.

• (5) most people who do support keeping the GA concept at all seem to be very much in favor of adding more structure to it and making it much more like the FA process rather than moving in the other direction (further deformalizing it to make it akin to the Barnstar process), which will, thank god, involve a formal nomination of "good article candidates" (or something more incorporated directly into the FA process), followed by actual organized votes on the matter—problem is, if this change ever does occur, all the articles that currently have "GA" on them will need to have it removed until they can go through the proper process. As such, not only is it rather counterproductive to be so widely implementing a controversial, disorganized, and still-in-testing project across hundreds of unrelated articles, and offensive to do so without consensus support, but it is also true that the more articles are marred with "GA" before the actual GA-approval process is finalized, the more work will be required to clean up all this beta-testing so that it can be replaced with a "good article" system that actually means something. -Silence 15:54, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Offensive? That's a very extreme statement! My view is that 400+ articles listed within a month and many supportive comments with just a couple of strong objectors indicates that this proposal is finding concensus in its favour. In fact, it would be incredibly easy, if we decided that a GAC system was needed, simply to move this page to WP:GAC and change the GA template to a GAC template. Worldtraveller 00:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Let me respond in bloc to Silence's arguments. (Responding point-by-point will only serve to disrupt his & my arguments.)

1 & 2. I'm sorry you consider the GA templates spam, but how else would you indicate that someone considers these articles worthwhile? There are dozens of lists of articles on Wikipedia, most of which are unknown to all but a few. By putting the template on the talk page, it at least raises the question whether the article should be considered Good or not, & provides a link back to the page which includes both the criteria & other examples of Good articles.

3. You must not have seen the same "cleanup" tags that I have, where someone at some forgotten time added them without any explanation. As far I have seen, there is no requirement to explain why an article needs to be "cleaned up": there is a discussion at Template talk:Cleanup about how its drawbacks, but no clear sense how to resolve this.

Incidentally, positive feedback is an important part of the critical process. I made the statement you quoted because the original poster expressed the opinion that finding defects is the only important input in the creative process here on Wikipedia -- with the exception of directly modifying the material, of course. This emphasis on what's wrong about articles -- instead of looking for what is right or good -- only serves to create an environment that leads to eventual editor discouragement & burnout.

4. I'm a little puzzled by this objection, whose argument I understand as, in brief, "Don't praise this article, because you are forcing me to explain why it's not good in order to remove it." Are we Wikipedians that uncomfortable with praise that we can't stand seeing this template at the top of a Talk page?

One point I'm assuming Silence is implying in this objection is that an article may be labelled as a "Good article" as one tactic in pushing a POV on Wikipedia. As I have been trying to impliment this process, if someone objects to an article being labelled Good, I don't add it to the list: an article can be black-balled for inclusion.

BTW, there are a few other criteria that have been assumed in considering an article as Good -- it should not be a stub, it should not be actively listed on cleanup, & the content should be reasonably stable. I hope these requirements can be added.

5. I'm not sure why you conclude that this process needs more structure. I believe that marking an article as Good should be part of a conversation about the quality of the article: if it doesn't belong, explain why & remove it from the list. If it is better than a Godo article, begin the process of making it a Featured article. And if an unworthy article is added, but no one notices, then it obviously is not a significant problem.

If I were to suggest a more structured process than what I've been trying to practice, it would be something even more unorthodox than what we have now, & which I suspect no one would agree to. The process would be simple: every Admin is allowed to select 10 articles that are not Featured Articles to be Good articles; with over 740 Admins as of this week, that would provide us with a list of 7400 "Good articles" in a few weeks, far more than we have now. I'm sure a lot of people would object that this would not be practical, but having reviewed a lot of the current Good articles & noticing which categories have more articles than others (for example, should we conclude that there are no Good articles in categories like automobiles, fighting vehicles, plants, animals, or communities in Latin America, Korea or Japan?) I would be curious to see what this list would look like, & if it revealed any patterns in our coverage.

(An aside about removing these templates. I am not being sarcastic here, but good luck tracking all of these templates down. I spent an afternoon last week trying to get the list on the project page & the category list of Good articles to match, & the two were off by about 70 articles. I suspect this is some kind of bug in the Wikipedia software.)

And in response to Radiant above, who comments that there are only half as many Good as Featured articles. You are aware that this process of identifying Good articles has only bene underway for a month now? We've had Featured articles in its current form for a couple of years. If we've been spending a couple of years looking for Good articles, I am confident that there would be at least 10-20 times as many.

One last note (& this is not directed at Silence or Radiant), please don't assume anything about those of us who are in favor of this proposal. For example, I've been contributing to Wikipedia for 3 years now, & am hardly a self-absorbed Gen-Y (unless that includes people born in 1957). I've seen a lot of good editors come & go too often due to burnout, & I believe that we need to do more to encourage them to stay. More "pats on the back" would be an important step, because the absense of acknowledging contributions can be just as hurtful as negative criticism. -- llywrch 18:28, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Concur with Llywrch. This is a great project. CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 11:53, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Setting up GAC and GARC

I've been reading the comments on here for sometime and while I do support this I must stand with the others who argue that there needs to be a process for nominating and removing articles otherwise this proposal will fall flat. The only suggestions for a process so far is one that will mirror FAC and FARC. Can anyone suggest anything better or shall we begin to go about setting up GAC and GARC? What needs to be done to set these up? *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 16:39, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Please explain how this will be different from FAC and FARC. — mark ✎ 16:44, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• I second Mark's question. This is my original concern that this page would either be too similar to FAC (and therefore redundant) or too arbitrary (and therefore pointless). Radiant_>|< 17:04, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • It has always (for the last 4 months I've been here, anyway) seemed to me that the {{facfailed}} template led me to know that an article was pretty good, but not to the level of Featured Article. Maybe that's assuming too much, but that is one of my standards for seeing an article as "good" without having to institute a new layer of bureaucracy. -- nae'blis _(talk) 17:41, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, I have added a few failed FA's as well. Most were removed due to fairly minor issues, but they are still good articles. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 17:43, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• The main difference would be the less stringent requirements for an article to be "good." *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 17:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
• How about just a list of nominated articles? We could say each article needs a nominator and two supporters, with no opposition; disputed GAs would go to the respective talk page to find a consensus or otherwise settle the dispute. Tuf-Kat 20:12, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • And we don't have to go through the process, whatever it is, with the articles already listed. We could grandfather them in -- FAC did, when the current process was instituted. Tuf-Kat

Another note

Wikipedia will have a rating feature very soon, which will allow editors to rate articles. This will obviate the need for a "good articles" process - any article above a certain rating can be considered "good". Radiant_>|< 22:48, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Not sure it would make GA redundant, otherwise presumably it would also make FAC redundant, no? Worldtraveller 23:40, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Potentially, yes. But FAC has solid criteria, as does Content Rating, and GA does not. To reiterate once more - a quick glance over this talk page shows objections to this process by Mechbrowman, Nichalp, Alkivar, Harro5, Raul654, Alan Pascoe, Silence and myself. I'd say that's significant objection. Now nobody would really mind if the proponents of this page create a list of pages they consider good articles, but if you want to spread {{GA}} tags all over the wiki please get additional comments first, from RFC, CS and/or the village pump, to find out if consensus actually thinks that's a good idea, because at present I doubt that. Radiant_>|< 01:31, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I feel the need to emphasise: GA has solid criteria as well! They're modelled closely on the FA criteria, so if they're not solid, then neither are the FA criteria. Worldtraveller 03:10, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• That is a straw man. FA is supported by consensus, this is dubious at best for GA. Once more, if you want to spread {{GA}} tags all over the wiki please get additional comments first, from RFC, CS and/or the village pump, to find out if consensus actually thinks that's a good idea, because at present I doubt that. Radiant_>|< 18:06, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

GA is certainly finding consensus, with over 400 articles listed within a month by many people and plenty of positive comments here (including one describing it as the best idea ever!). When I started the page I mentioned it in many places, such as the mailing list, talk:FAC, Wikipedia 1.0, etc etc - it can't really be said that it's some kind of evil plan hatched in secret. Don't know if you noticed that the templates were listed on templates for deletion, and resoundingly kept - that also to me indicates a consensus that their use is not a problem. My point about the criteria stands - whether you believe that GA is widely supported or not, its criteria are clearly defined. The process for determining whether articles meet those criteria is still evolving, but the criteria are clear. Worldtraveller 21:11, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

While that process is still evolving, I've reworked {{GA}} a bit to emphasize that this is not a policy (yet). The pervious wording was very declamatory. -- nae'blis _(talk) 15:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Does an encyclopedia usually go around saying good article bad article? Not really. I'm not sure it belongs here.--Samuel J. Howard 10:06, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

So Wikipedia is not your usual encyclopedia. — mark ✎ 10:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

The number of labeled articles keeps being cited as "support", but I could label lots of articles in a couple of hours.--Samuel J. Howard 02:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

New template for removed listings

A lot of people complained that {{delistedGA}} was too obtrusive on talk pages. I've just created {{delistedGAbecause}} as an alternative, in a different format which I hope will still draw attention to the reasons why an article might have been removed, without being obtrusive. Worldtraveller 16:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Lavoisier

Someone more active on this than me may want to have a look at Antoine Lavoisier, listed as a GA. Not a single citation, as far as I can tell, just a "Further reading" list. Looks essentially correct, but I'm not sure I'd have singled it out. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:37, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

This seems OK to me; do references have to include specific page numbers to count? I had thought not, particularly if the entire book is about Lavoisier. As for why it was chosen, it was possibly because it was recently assessed as "A-Class" on the newChemistry worklist. Walkerma 02:00, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

If the further reading section is actually the references section, it ought to be renamed, and the article would certainly meet the GA criteria, but at the moment it does appear to lack references. Worldtraveller 19:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the history, the original article was written in September 2001 by none other than Larry Sanger himself, and four of the "further reading" citations were listed at the same time the article was posted. Wikipedia states that "references" are used in writing the article, whereas "further reading" material is not, but I doubt such definitions existed here in 2001. I think we have to assume that those citations were used by Sanger when writing the article (why would he post books he didn't use, and omit to list books he did use?). Indeed, the traité elementaire is explicitly referenced in the text in Sanger's article. Therefore at least four citations would seem to qualify for the modern definition of references, and there may be others. I have amended the page accordingly. Is it now a definite GA? Walkerma 19:52, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Definitely looks good to me now! I too would assume that what was listed all those years ago as further reading was almost certainly used as a reference, and it could be the other works are references as well, and were just added under the already existing heading. Worldtraveller 20:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)