Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations: Difference between revisions

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:::I don’t necessarily disagree, however when it works it does facilitate the spotcheck, and I’d be reluctant to require nominators to find other methods unless there is a firmer GACR guideline. [[User:Chipmunkdavis|CMD]] ([[User talk:Chipmunkdavis|talk]]) 16:55, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

::::definitely, i just thought it worth mentioning. i’m not suggesting we demand nominators jump through hoops … [[User:Sawyer777|sawyer]] * any/all * [[User talk:Sawyer777|talk]] 16:59, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

::I agree with CMD’s comments. I’d add that although it’s not a fail if there are no page ranges, when you do the spotcheck this means, as someone says above, that the nominator will have to hunt through the book for the information to satisfy the spotcheck request. You might as well suggest to the nominator then that they add the page range. Similarly with dead links, which are allowed; you can still ask for the source information for a spotcheck, and if no archived copy can be found the source has to be removed, but if an archive is found you can suggest to the nominator that they add it. [[User:Mike Christie|Mike Christie]] ([[User_talk:Mike Christie|talk]] – [[Special:Contributions/Mike_Christie|contribs]] – [[User:Mike Christie/Reference library|library]]) 18:28, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Good article nominations

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

To help centralize discussions and keep related topics together, several other GA talk pages redirect here.

Archives

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31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36

GA: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Criteria: 1, 2, 3, 4

Reassessment: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

GA help: 1, 2

Nominations/Instructions: 1

This page has archives. Sections older than 7 days may be auto-archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.

Hi all, the October Backlog Drive is starting in a few days and I am currently the only coordinator. An additional coordinator would be very appreciated, especially considering this is my first time coordinating. IAWW (talk) 13:31, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @It is a wonderful world. Thank You for being coordinator. I will join you in coordinating. Fade258 (talk) 13:40, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Fade, I’m looking forward to working with you 🙂 IAWW (talk) 18:11, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is a wonderful world: What is involved? Bgsu98 (Talk) 15:05, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Bgsu98. Thanks for asking it! And sorry for my interfere. If I am not wrong then, Do you asking what coordinating invloves? If yes then, In my opinion, Coordinating a backlog drive mostly involves helping to keep things organised and running smoothly. This usually means to make sure that the drive page and leaderboard are updated correctly, answering participant questions about the rules or scoring and to double check that the reviews meet the Good Article criteria etc. Fade258 (talk) 15:21, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am happy to assist, but as I have never done this before, I would need guidance. Bgsu98 (Talk) 16:27, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank for your help. Please review the drive page whether it is correct or not. I am adding your name in coordination. Cheers! Fade258 (talk) 16:37, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately all the coordinators I know from previous backlog drives indicated they wouldn’t be available, but I think we should be alright to figure it out as we go along. I believe the bulk of the work is keeping track of the points. If you haven’t participated in one before I recommend you look at one of the previous drive pages to see how the point allocation and formatting works. IAWW (talk) 18:10, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think point system is little bit complex but we need to make it clear and simple points system. Fade258 (talk) 01:27, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I just copied it from a previous backlog drive IAWW (talk) 08:28, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t really think the point system is any more complex than it needs to be. To address the backlog, the drive should incentivise reviews of unpopular articles. Articles that have not been reviewed for a long time are apparently unpopular, and articles that are very long are also unpopular. The most successful drives have addressed these issues by having extra points for both long articles and old nominations. If the bonus points are removed, the drive will not achieve its goals. —Kusma (talk) 10:56, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Kusma, Thanks for your opinion. I agree with your above comment. I think we’re not going to remove the bonus points. I kindly request you to review the scoring system and place a message on drive’s talk page if scoring system needs to be updated. Fade258 (talk) 12:26, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We can use some more folks joining.

In previous years, we’ve had immense success with backlog drives. Now, they seem to be a smaller-scale event. This might be because we had a few heavy hitters, but I wonder if there’s other factors as well? I’ve been encouraging a few people with open nominations today with low numbers of reviews, but don’t know how effective that’ll be. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:50, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think it’s just with backlog drives, it just feels like there’s more interest in nominating than reviewing than there was in the past. It’s so hard to tell what the cause is and how to fix it. IAWW (talk) 20:04, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It’s slow as molasses at FLC as well. Bgsu98 (Talk) 21:08, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is it the time of the year yet to redo the Wikicup weightings? That might help us get more reviewers in. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:58, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is the criteria for being a coordinator anyway? Crystalite13 (talk) 17:03, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The GAN page lists GA nominations in alphabetical order by category: agriculture, then art, then on and on until you get to video games, warfare and miscellaneous. This ordering results in bias where agriculture articles tend to get shorter time in between nomination and review than those in other categories that are listed towards the bottom of the list. The wait times are unequal for nominators depending only on the category, not the quality of the article. Over time this can discourage nominators from under-reviewed categories of articles.

Here’s what I propose: we should implement a rotating system for categories in terms of the order they are listed on the page. Every two to four weeks (or once per GA backlog drive), we should reorder the list of categories cyclically so that a new category is on top. The way I see it, the rotation could be managed by a bot, a template update, or it could be done manually. If a reviewer was only interested in a particular category, we could make a subpage that only lists GA nominees in that category (e.g. WP:GAN/Video games) or something of the sort.

The benefits to this idea are that it promotes fairer exposure across all GA topic areas by helping to distribute reviewer attention a little more evenly and reduces unintentional backlog accumulation in later-listed categories (looking at you, warfare).

Thoughts? Gommeh 📖 🎮 22:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Kusma @HurricaneZeta this discussion may be of interest to you based on our Discord conversations over the past day or so. Gommeh 📖 🎮 22:31, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What’s the evidence behind the opening paragraph? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:50, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there’s usually less than a month of waiting time for the agriculture, food, and drink category, while categories lower than that have waiting times up to 10 months, with nominations from January or February being frequent. HurricaneZeta (T) (C) 23:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So the proposal is about rotating which category is at the top, not the whole order? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:31, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. I would be OK reshuffling the whole order too, but this proposal would only change which category gets listed at the top. The goal is to reduce the average wait time. Gommeh 📖 🎮 23:37, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree this is worth considering. But as a nerdy maths teacher, I am going to point out that the average wait time shouldn’t be affected, it is the standard deviation that would decrease (equally worth doing, don’t get me wrong. I’m just being pedantic). SSSB (talk) 15:39, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I know that I suggested this on Discord, but I am not sure the effect would be worth the disruption of shuffling the page so often. We could highlight a different category as “focus category” for each month though, similar to the “subject sweeps” we had recently. —Kusma (talk) 07:01, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For example, the WP:GAG could feature one section of GAN per edition and maybe highlight five open nominations (perhaps the oldest open nomination of each nominator in the section). —Kusma (talk) 16:44, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn’t see the harm in it. I mean, science and music are dead at the moment whilst engineering is slowly getting hacked away. Icepinner 15:05, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We already have topic list subpages, they are listed at Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Topic lists. CMD (talk) 15:39, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If this imbalance is a real issue (and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be), I support choosing a random topic to appear on top as a “focus subject” for the month or week JustARandomSquid (talk) 17:13, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Shall I put together an RFC to get more people’s input on this? I can see it has at least a little support. Gommeh 📖 🎮 17:18, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please don’t, the support is marginal at best (call me an oppose if you like). Kusma‘s idea of having a featured section might be workable, but rotation would be a faff and it’d just make finding one’s usual section more difficult. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:38, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Having a featured section would also be OK and I’d be more than OK with discussing that in the RFC as well. Gommeh 📖 🎮 17:44, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – is anyone able run the numbers and verify empirically that the effect described is real? If so, then I would be inclined to support it. That evidence (if it exists) should form the basis of the proposed RFC. — Amakuru (talk) 17:48, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Asking for a third opinion at Talk:Enderlin tornado/GA1 as to whether two criteria are met; stability and completeness. Not super worried about the edit warring as it’s not consistent (still would like another look from someone experienced), but since this was the reason this was initially failed: do potential events (in this case, potential FEMA response to the tornado) fall under GACR3a’s requirement for completeness? I don’t see anything saying this explicitly, but I’m not sure whether articles should be assessed on current information or future information that could possibly lead to an expansion of the article.

Thanks! And a WP:3O is requested overall; I’m obviously biased as the nominator and there’s been an off-wiki discussion regarding this which led to the re-opening of the discussion. ^EF⁵ 02:49, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m definitely not the most knowledgeable about the GA criteria but unless the event is imminent (i.e., under normal circumstances, the event has an overwhelming chance of happening) and would fundamentally change the article (i.e., a substantial amount of information would be added and the structure could possibly change entirely), e.g., an upcoming video game, I think we ought not bog ourselves down in the possibilities of what could happen relating to the subject. nub 🙂 03:08, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, I’m speaking generally here, so I don’t know how helpful this would be in this specific context. Apologies in advance. nub 🙂 03:09, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, disregard the 3O request, it isn’t a huge deal. Still would like clarification on 3a though. ^EF⁵ 04:54, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

3a isn’t completeness, but broadness. There is a wide variety of opinions on what is broad enough, but the official criteria say it’s “significantly weaker” than the comprehensive criteria of FAC. WP:GANOT says that one mistake is to demand information not in reliable sources. Given it’s about a possible future event, there aren’t RSs yet (I assume), so it cannot count towards broadness. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:56, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed – if RS’s cover it in the future, then I expect it’ll be added then. RS’s aren’t covering it now. Gommeh 📖 🎮 14:17, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My reflection is the same as nub’s. I believe we have previously interpreted this regarding events that are definitely going to happen that would significantly alter the article, such as their video game example. This is easily extended to say a building being built, a sports competition that is ongoing with a definite end date, or a storm that is still happening. A storm that finished months ago however, seems in the clear. CMD (talk) 14:26, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Duke Nukem Forever has been a GA well before it was released, but that is a bit of a special case and perhaps somewhat atypical 🙂 —Kusma (talk) 19:49, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can also think of GA nominated/reviewed while the underlining project was under construction at the time such as the Level Crossing Removal Project, Midland Main Line upgrade and A9 dualling project (the latter two nominated by me). I just think that when you have enough info on a project to satisfy the ‘broad’ criteria (such as the background, planning and why the project is needed), then a GA is suitable. You also have video games that have been in early access for years such as BeamNG.drive, which it still is. JuniperChill (talk) 15:52, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here from Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/2025 Enderlin tornado/1, where the nominator of the GAR and I (nominator of the GAN) have a conflicting viewpoint on this. WP:GAR says explicitly Instability in itself is not a reason to delist an article. But, it doesn’t mention specifically how long it should be before the article shouldn’t be re-assessed on GACR6 (stability), and the nominator in this case cites that the re-assessment reasoning is based on instability at the original GAN 2 days ago. So, the question is: Can GACR6 be used to put an article up for re-assessment if it was very-recently promoted? Would like a few experienced opinions, and apologies for posting here twice in two days. ^EF⁵ 20:56, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Worth noting a few statistics on this one. Article was created on 6 October, nominated for GA on 7 October, taken under review on 9 October and passed on 11 October. Between GA nomination and approval, there were 205 revisions made to the article, or over 50 per day. My conclusion is clear: 1) the article was clearly unstable when under review (and remains so), 2) the reviewer did not adequately assess the stability. As the review was very recent, stability should be considered at the GAR. The good news is that GARs typically last more than a month, so if we do what the GA reviewer should have initially done and just wait for the process of article creation to finish, all should be fine on that front. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:21, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AirshipJungleman29, you are probably right about the instability of this particular article, specially as it was so new, so that much of the change during the GAN was most likely due to its newness and being in work. That is to be distinguished (for other articles) from change that is caused by the GA process itself (in response to the reviewer’s comments), which should be taken as normal work and not as instability. In general (again, not specifically about that particular article), a large number of edits during GAN is not in itself cause for alarm: some nominators may make a few large edits, while others might make a lot of small ones in response to the same comments. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:12, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So on the GA nominations page, I’ve mainly been trying to review the oldest articles in the backlog, but I was wondering, what can I do when the nominator isn’t present on Wikipedia anymore? Crystalite13 (talk) 17:04, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Give them a week or two after your initial review to wake up and then, if the article cannot be passed without additional improvements and nobody else steps in, fail it. (If you’re going to do it this way, I think the initial review should at least list some issues in need of improvement but need not be a complete review. My reviews are often a two-step process with the sourcing spot-check in a second phase after other improvements that might have changed the sourcing.) —David Eppstein (talk) 17:50, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I often start the review with just a check that the nominator will be able to respond to comments. If I hear nothing within like 2 weeks, I fail it. Thanks for working from the oldest noms, which are generally the toughest. IAWW (talk) 18:01, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Putting the review on hold starts a notional seven-day countdown: in practice, that is usually stretched if the nominator is actively working on the nomination, but it might provide an easy method to close the review if not: make your comments, put it on hold, and then fail the review if the time elapses with no response. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:32, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You could try asking other frequent contributors to the article or Wikiprojects (if they are active) to see if anyone is likely to respond. A decent review will be helpful to editors (now or in the future) even if the article doesn’t get promoted (or even if someone doesn’t respond within the deadline).Nigel Ish (talk) 19:42, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone put this back into the queue? The reviewer globally vanished in the middle of the review. ^EF⁵ 16:36, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done. CMD (talk) 16:46, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That user is globally locked. Anything pending that they started should be sent back to the queue. Bgsu98 (Talk) 23:02, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for handling that. CMD (talk) 00:36, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not doing too well right now. I have maybe three dozen articles sitting in the queue right now – most are in the Other sports subsection, and a handful in the Television subsection – in case anyone is interested. I would appreciate it! Bgsu98 (Talk) 22:59, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m conducting my first GAN review since spot-checks became a requirement, and I’ve run into an issue where some citations don’t have page numbers or specific ranges in some cases, making them hard to check. So are page numbers/ranges required or not for GA? And if they are, how precise should they be? The currently written criteria make no mention of this apart from articles having to be verifiable. FunkMonk (talk) 14:42, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think not. Our only criteria related to the citations themselves (as opposed to the sources or content) is #2a, which is all about layout. I think it’s reasonable for reviewers to demand page ranges from nominators, as proper reviewing would be impractical without them. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:17, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If we assume it is not required, how does that gel with spot-checks recently having become a requirement for reviewers? If nominators aren’t required to give citation ranges, it’s almost impossible to spot-check. FunkMonk (talk) 16:11, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The nominator isn’t required to give page numbers, and can instead provide relevant quotes from the source upon the reviewer’s request. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:16, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That’s a pretty weird, onesided halfway between former GAN and FAC reviews. So we’re not provided the means to check the sources ourselves but we should ask nominators for quotes? Sure, assume good faith and all, but if someone wanted to tamper with the quotes, that would be pretty easy. What is the point of this extra hoop for reviewers then if the burden doesn’t go both ways? FunkMonk (talk) 16:31, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the idea behind that is that it’s fairly common for somebody to misread a source; it’s fairly rare for somebody to deliberately falsify one (though that does happen!) GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 16:40, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The burden is all on the nominator, who has to run around finding the pages and quotations (and possibly falsifying them, as you suggest). The case you are outlining, where the reviewer could access the source, but not identify the page, and the nominator takes the very risky opportunity to tamper with it, seems unlikely to happen. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:44, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is no running around if it’s already there. I’ve nominated dozens of articles, I know both ends of the process very well, it seems just like basic verifiability to have page numbers. And yes, falsification is a real issue when it comes to contentious topics or paid editing. I reviewed Imelda Marcos, for example, which was later demoted for the sources basically not supporting the text. FunkMonk (talk) 16:49, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I also don’t know why you wouldn’t use page numbers. But if you are reviewing a WP:OFFLINE source you cannot access, you will need to AGF that the nominator provides the correct quote. It seems silly to allow that but to effectively forbid trusting nominators in other cases. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:07, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I use kindle ebooks (and other, completely legally acquired ebooks) as sources because they’re more accessible. These don’t have page numbers; personally, I do my best to provide chapter/section names, but these aren’t always obvious in an ebook format. I actually don’t think a demand or expectation of page numbers is reasonable, but asking is fine (as long as you respect why somebody might say “no, I can’t”). GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 16:22, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

they are not formally required, but it is always reasonable to ask for page numbers when reviewing and it is generally expected for the purposes of Wikipedia:Text-source integrity and ease of verification. personally, i avoid ranges more than maybe 3 pages. … sawyer * any/all * talk 16:34, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We have in practice supported requesting page numbers for large sources for the reason Firefangledfeathers mentions. Not a precise art, so hard to put something strict in the criteria: if the source is a pdf of 2-4 pages of large text I probably wouldn’t raise it. However, a reviewer (who represents a reader who might be one of those small percentage that do check sources) should ideally not have to hunt through reams of text to figure out where a particular idea is being cited from. Other factors, such as a direct gbooks link to the page, a quote as mentioned above (although perhaps in the source template rather than just the GAN page), or a lack of page numbers in the source, also means a firm rule on page numbers might slightly miss its intended purpose, but in practice page numbers are often the most convenient way to narrow the portion of a long source a reviewer needs to look through. CMD (talk) 16:36, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

for the record, gbooks is not a very lightfast way to link page numbers – see WP:GBWP, which is an essay but presents a good case in my opinion. … sawyer * any/all * talk 16:50, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t necessarily disagree, however when it works it does facilitate the spotcheck, and I’d be reluctant to require nominators to find other methods unless there is a firmer GACR guideline. CMD (talk) 16:55, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

definitely, i just thought it worth mentioning. i’m not suggesting we demand nominators jump through hoops … sawyer * any/all * talk 16:59, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with CMD’s comments. I’d add that although it’s not a fail if there are no page ranges, when you do the spotcheck this means, as someone says above, that the nominator will have to hunt through the book for the information to satisfy the spotcheck request. You might as well suggest to the nominator then that they add the page range. Similarly with dead links, which are allowed; you can still ask for the source information for a spotcheck, and if no archived copy can be found the source has to be removed, but if an archive is found you can suggest to the nominator that they add it. Mike Christie (talk – contribs – library) 18:28, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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