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Good article nominations

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

October 2024 backlog drive

When we discussed having more frequent backlog drives, we talked about having some drives that were "themed" instead of, like the backlog drives we've done historically, aimed at zeroing out the backlog as much as possible, focusing on the oldest articles. This past month we did a drive focused on bringing in newbie reviewers. The next drive is coming up in October and the idea for this one is to draw up a list of articles at the start, and aim to completely zero out that list. So, the question is: what should our list be? We could just make a list of all the articles that have been in the nomination queue for >n days. But maybe we want to focus on something else. Topic? Length? GANs by editors with high review-to-GA ratios? GANs by editors with <n GAs? Something else? Let's get some suggestions going in this thread so we can have a list to decide from. -- asilvering (talk) 16:21, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

We could let any interested editor submit articles they want reviewed to the list. This could include a reasonable amount (say a max of 3) of their own articles, with the understanding that they will participate in the drive themselves. This could help attract people to the drive, if they feel like by participating they are more likely to get a review.

More selfless editors could then nominate older nominations, those with high ratios, ones they think are especially important, etc. to round out the list.

Further, it might make sense to group articles very similar in topic into small batches of about 3-4 articles, with the expectation that a reviewer may experience a learning curve for the topic area and thus be able to close out those nominations relatively quickly ForksForks (talk) 18:57, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I have a couple thoughts about the previous drive as we prepare for the next one. First of all, thanks to Asilvering for doing a lot of the grunt work on the previous one!

I was somewhat unengaged by the July drive. It could have been a mix of my work and vacation schedule, but the motivation was not there for me personally. I also felt like the drive's page and promotion were a bit last minute, so despite the drive being listed as upcoming, I don't think any of the pages for it were made until a couple days prior; in fact, after it had already begun, it was me that had to link it from the nom page. For the next drive, we should try to have all of the pages drafted and start promotion and notifications early. Make sure WikiCup folks and the like know it's coming.

Reflecting on the newbie theme, were we able to measure that success? Like what defined a newbie, how many did we get, etc.? Was this a backlog-focused drive or new reviewer engagement drive? Looking back at the drive's page, while some of the prose was changed to past tense to acknowledge its end, the progress table was not even updated to reflect the final count. Did we succeed?

For the actual question being asked here... how about for the October drive a theme of "popular pages". The work list could be noms sorted by number of daily views. It's great to write a GA, but it's really great to have an article become a GA that lots of folks read! I think this could be a positive not just for the drive, but for Wikipedia's overall quality. Advanced notice for such a drive could encourage editors to improve and nominate additional popular pages as well. A question would be though, are we still trying to have a backlog elimination drive or just a Good Article drive? Both types are valuable to the project. Grk1011 (talk) 14:00, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

@Grk1011, the backlog elimination drive is the January one (this year, we held it in March). This one was of course still supposed to work towards clearing the backlog, but the main goal of it wasn't to eliminate the backlog completely so much as to bring in new reviewers and give them more of an onboarding process than normally exists. On that, I think it was really successful as a proof of concept. We got some really good new, conscientious reviewers, and we didn't have any major problems with new reviewers being disruptive or experienced reviewers getting frustrated when trying to help. A new reviewer even came in first place!

"Newbie reviewer" was for the purposes of the drive defined as someone who had not yet completed 5 GA reviews. "Experienced reviewer" was someone who had completed 10 or more. During the drive, we had 5 newbie reviewers "graduate" out of being newbies, and 2 reviewers became experienced reviewers. We had 11 newbie reviewers join and review at least one article. 28 articles were reviewed by newbies (manual count, might be off).

On promotion, yes, I set things up quite late (I was seriously underwater with non-wikipedia deadlines at the time). But given that we'd never done a backlog drive like this before, personally, I'm happy that we got this level of participation - enough to see what was working and what could be tweaked, but not so much that it was overwhelming. Actually, the list of newbie-reviewed articles waiting for an experienced reviewer was overwhelming near the beginning. We'll have to make sure for future newbie drives that experienced reviewers are ready to handle a bunch of assists right at the beginning.

For context on these drives, see Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 31#Proposals to address the backlog and Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 32#Proposal 1: Regular backlog drives. -- asilvering (talk) 17:32, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I wasn't exactly looking for more background, but rather asking if the previous drive was successful and documented as successful somewhere- I don't want you to feel like you need to answer folks individually about this! I was also suggesting the 'popular pages' theme for the next drive since that was the question asked in this thread, and whether we would like the focus to be backlog elimination or process engagement, as that could impact how it's set up. Grk1011 (talk) 12:58, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Each drive is listed at Wikipedia:Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives. We got through about twice as many extra reviews in the March 2024 one as we did this July, but, as you can see from those threads on the backlog, it didn't "feel" as successful as it should have.

The idea for the October backlog drive is that we address just a section of the backlog, and give ourselves a task we can actually finish - that is, the aim is to come up with a list (or lists) of GANs to target and get that list to zero. So, elimination, but just of a subset. For reference, there are a bit more than 500 GANs up right now. I haven't gone through and totalled all the previous drives, but my quick guess is that our previous free-for-all backlog drives got through something like 250-300 reviews each. -- asilvering (talk) 02:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

How to track progress during backlog drives

When we discussed problems with backlog drives, one of the things we talked about was that the progress tracker is vulnerable to new submissions - that is, editors submitting new GANs makes the progress appear to slide backwards, which is really demotivating for backlog drive participants, especially when, like in the January drive, we have so many new submissions that they actually cause the backlog to have a daily increase during the drive. So, during this most recent backlog drive, rather than tracking how many GANs are still outstanding, I tracked how many GANs were reviewed by drive participants. That way, we'd only ever see progress occurring, and we'd see just how much of it we were responsible for.

But there are two problems with that approach:

1. I had to do this counting manually, which was kind of annoying; also, I didn't get to it precisely on time every day, which limits its effect (that's a me problem, though)
2. It turns out a LOT of backlog-reduction is actually the work of people who are not participating in the backlog drive, so the numbers are sad and small.

For #2, it's true that this one was supposed to be a smaller-than-usual backlog drive, and the effect would be different in the big January 2025 drive. I'm not sure by how much. It's also possible that, during the big backlog drive, fewer reviews are conducted by people who aren't participating. For reference, the March backlog drive included 387 reviews - about double the number of the July drive. But I don't know how many reviews were done in March that weren't counted in the drive, since I'm not sure how to find out how many reviews were opened in total in March. A bigger effect, though, also means more trouble from a #1 perspective.

This isn't relevant for the upcoming October drive, since for that one we'll be generating a target list at the beginning, then working from that list. But for the January drive, I think we might be better off just counting the way we've always done it before. -- asilvering (talk) 16:44, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

WP:FEB24 made use of categories that showed progress bars (and provided a convenient list of articles to target). If there were a way to automatically add the articles that we are interested in to a category and remove them if a review was started then that could help. ForksForks (talk) 22:36, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

If it would be useful I could probably add a query to the GAN query tool that would take two dates and return a list of all the reviews started in that date range, along with the current status of the review (passed, failed, on hold, under review, superseded (i.e. the review was deleted)). Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:49, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd be curious to see how many reviews were opened in March 2024, so we could compare the number of backlog drive reviews to the number of total reviews. -- asilvering (talk) 00:41, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

By month this year:

Month	# Reviews started
Jan	246
Feb	208
Mar	600
Apr	225
May	207
Jun	266
Jul	349

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:13, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Okay, so that's a bit more than 200 reviews that weren't part of the backlog drive in March, and a bit less than 200 reviews that weren't part of the backlog drive last month. We appear to do something like ~230 reviews a month, give or take, whether there's a backlog drive or not, and then the backlog drive is extra. The March drive started with 750 outstanding noms and ended with 555 outstanding noms. -- asilvering (talk) 02:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

asilvering, it should be pointed out that reviews starting during the March drive continued to be finished after the month ended, dropping the outstanding noms down to 506 at 01:00, 11 April 2024, before the numbers began climbing again. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:46, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

GA Review History

Is there a way to see a list of your reviews that includes who the nominator is? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:16, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Just put in your username at https://ganfilter.toolforge.org/g_editor_query/ and it will give you a list. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:38, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Thankyou! Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:51, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Review withdrawal

Hi all, I've been asked to withdraw from a review on Rai dynasty. I failed the article, which was reverted by the nominator. This has relisted the article, and I am still the reviewer. Is there a way for my review to be preserved while allowing the editor to relist? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 13:20, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

If an article is failed it can be relisted with a new nomination. Your review is preserved on that review page, the new page will have a different title (in this case with "GA2"). CMD (talk) 13:57, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

TrangaBellam appears to have simultaneously decided that Rollinginhisgrave is incapable of reviewing "their" articles, but also to reopen Rollinginhisgrave's review. Aside from anything else, the nominator cannot revert a reviewer who has chosen to end a review, so I'll reinstate the original close shortly. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:10, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Because, I wanted to preserve the comments. And, sure, I will send for a re-nom though I have no idea why an editor with less than 500 edits to mainspace is reviewing 22 GANs! TrangaBellam (talk) 14:18, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

At a quick glance there is an overfocus on GACR1 and not enough examination of other aspects, but that is not a cause for such incivility. CMD (talk) 14:44, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Sure, my apologies to them for the outburst. But it is ridiculous that someone who has barely edited any article is reviewing so many GARs simultaneously and ludicrously. If project regulars feel that's not a red flag, well, ... TrangaBellam (talk) 17:24, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

in fact it is not a red flag, and so long as they're doing a decent job at reviewing and willing to learn the ropes (as Rollinginhisgrave seems to be) then their edit count is of no consequence. you ought not to bite. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 03:59, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Rolling is currently reviewing one of my nominations and I have gotten a very good impression that they understand the GA criteria well. Their review comments so far have been particularly helpful in tightening up prose and neutralising potentially non-neutral points of view. I am more than happy with what they have done so far and am looking forward to the rest of the review. That they don't have a lot of edits in the main space (although almost 500 edits hardly makes them a newbie) doesn't concern me when I'm confident that they understand the ins and outs of what they are doing in this process. Not every reviewer needs to be a writer, they just need to be a good reader, which Rolling clearly is.

Reading over the article on the Rai dynasty, I completely understand why Rolling failed it. I think the article's prose is very confusing and uses a lot of words to say very little. There are also some clear problems with neutrality and broadness, so that's criteria 1, 3 and 4 this is failing to live up to. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:44, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Interesting; I will wait for your feedback. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:01, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Newbies aren't always clueless. If someone competent joins and takes the time to learn processes before editing, we should applaud this unless they give us a reason not to. And speaking to this specific issue, reviewers are expected to fail the review if the same issue exists throughout the article; listing every instance of a recurring problem is beyond the purview of a reviewer's job. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Adding links to review circles

Following up from this discussion, I've added links to Wikipedia:Good article review circles at the nomination instructions (diff) and the GAN tab header (diff). (Courtesy pings for Thebiguglyalien and coordinators GMH Melbourne and PCN02WPS.) —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:10, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I've reverted the addition to the tab header; I don't think that's neccessary. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:04, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Would you care to explain why? I think it's a useful place to attract more attention to it, which will hopefully help get it off the ground with the wider community. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 18:10, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

AirshipJungleman29? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 03:19, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

If the review circles are to get into the mainstream they certainly need to be treated as such, and publicised to the maximum extent possible. The tab would seem to be fully justified in this case, as GAN is close to broken and better mechanisms are needed; review circles may be such a mechanism, though it's probably too early to tell if they can scale up sufficiently. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:55, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Okay, that seems fair. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 09:52, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Citing predecessor/successor in infoboxes

For people who held any sort of position, the infobox often lists the predecessor and the successor. It seems that these aren't typically expected to have sources at GAN, and there are many GAs where they're not mentioned in the body. Is this something that's been discussed before? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:33, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Ah the joys of beyond-the-subject frames, boxes, and templates. All assume that materials are cited elsewhere. In the case of predecessors and successors, these are certainly beyond the scope of the article as they don't concern the subject who occupies the box in between. If we view such frame structures as navigation aids to the reader, they have the same status as navbars, viz., links to related articles with a fair amount of guidance as to what types of things they are – companies, books, scholars, sportspeople, whatever – but no citations right there in the structure. Hard to see how this can be avoided for navboxes; given that, we might as well not worry too much about pre-/post- navguides either, really. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:36, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

So, in essence, information in an infobox that lies beyond the scope of the article does not meet the same citation standard as information relating to the subject? i.e. a birth date in the infobox should be cited in the article but a successor in office need not be mentioned? Krisgabwoosh (talk) 21:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Seems more an issue of infoboxes expanding beyond MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE, and our practices are not able to handle these cases because they are not meant to. CMD (talk) 04:41, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

It's hard to see why the article body would make a thing of successors, even if predecessors could just about get a somewhat-off-topic mention. Similar case for previous and next books in a series, the matter is above the level of the book itself. It does seem reasonable for boxes to provide such navigation. More problematic may be the rather overblown pre/post boxes for ceremonial offices which often appear at the ends of articles. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:51, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

If an entire article would not make a thing of something at some point, the infobox definitely shouldn't. Navigation should be left to the navigation boxes or the articles covering the level above mentioned. CMD (talk) 07:35, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, so what would you do with all of these thingies at the ends of a thousand articles? Each article should certainly cite that Casimir Bloggs is a baronet, but it's not likely to say much if anything about Casimir's predecessors, still less his successors. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:55, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Navboxes that appear at the end of the article are AFAIK technically tricky, as references placed after the Reflist template don't work properly. I don't think we can source them outside of treating sources as an EL. CMD (talk) 08:02, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Mm, klunky. Well I don't see why nav info (pre/post) in the infobox should be treated differently just because its box is above the Reflist, the function is exactly the same. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:20, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

That sort of misses the underlying problem which is that infoboxes aren't navboxes and shouldn't be used for navigation. Nonetheless, as Nikkimaria has found below, they should be sourced if they contain information not in the article. CMD (talk) 08:34, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

So you'd try to rip all nav info out of infoboxes? A very blurry line: all wikilinks are nav, whether they're links to people's institutions, siblings, cities; there seems no good reason in a book article not to mention how it fits into its context in the same way, and so on. The alternative would only be yet more space-hogging sidebars, which are definitely navboxes: not an improvement. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:46, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd keep it to the items mentioned in the article, where possible. CMD (talk) 08:55, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

MOS:INFOBOXREF indicates: "If the material needs a reference (see WP:MINREF for guidelines) and the information does not also appear in the body of the article, the reference should be included in the infobox. But editors should first consider including the fact in the body of the article." So if these claims aren't in the article body, they would need to be cited directly. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:04, 14 August 2024 (UTC)