Wikipedia talk:What is a good article?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Archive

Archives
1 2

Contents

[edit] Adding criteria

It is not because I don't want to be bold and change it but should we add (and we need a consensus on that) these criteria :

1(c) it follows the Wikipedia Manual of Style including the list guideline;
3. It is broad in its coverage. In this respect :
(a) it addresses all major aspects of the topic (this requirement is slightly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required by WP:FAC, and allows shorter articles and broad overviews of large topics to be listed);
(b) it stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary details (no trivia).

With the first one being a guideline for list addition and the second one being blatant about the trivia (we don't want pure trivia). Lincher 22:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me, I would of thought many editors might already pick up on such errors just reviewing even without literal guidelines against these sort of things :/. Homestarmy
As for the trivia part, it bothers the editors more than the reviewers so we have to state it clearly or else they will answer back that it isn't in the MoS. Lincher 03:57, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
So basically, this would mean no trivia sections at all? I hope most reviwers realize that they can put articles on hold so people can delete it heh. Homestarmy 21:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Might I raise a voice in protest? Trivia are nontrivial. Trivia often provides a depth of insight into the subject that would not be provided by a lack of "unnecessary details". Wordnet defines encyclopedic as being "broad in scope or content". Trivia consists of INTERESTING facts that might easily be overlooked - and if users are INTERESTED, they are hardly "unnecessary" facts, are they? If you're looking to be concise, I might point out that a blank page contains no unnecessary details.... ClairSamoht 21:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I understand what point you are trying to make though, when you have basic sentences written in a list that are relevant to the content then a section should be created in order to incorporate these to the text and render it in some comprehensible prose. As for the pop culture lists and other trivia informations like ... the item A was used in movie [blah] or michael's cat was named [blah] ... shouldn't appear in articles if they aren't relevant or notable (or even verifiable). To cut to the point, to prevent creating lenthy trivia sections that talk about almost out-of-context information, the mentioned criteria should be added. Lincher 18:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
How about this, what if it says (no non-notable trivia)? That way, serious facts that aren't easily adaptable into the article can be in the trivia, while things like a person's third uncle's pet dog's name and how it is eerily familiar to the person's great great great grandmother don't get included. Homestarmy 21:14, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Criteria added, comments are welcomed if any problem arises or any objections are sounded. Lincher 17:30, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what consensus was reached, in terms of putting the rule into practice.
If you're working on the "Jump the shark" article, mentioning that the phrase comes from a Happy Days episode in which a waterskiing Fonz jumps over a shark is rather important to the article, and isn't trivia. If you're working on a "Happy Days" episode, it's trivia, and I'd say it's non-notable trivia at that; others might well disagree.
But in one episode of "The many loves of Dobie Gillis", Maynard G. Krebs says that the middle initial "G" stands for Walter. If one were working on a "Bob Denver" article, I have a hard time deciding whether the trivia is notable or non-notable?
But in both of these cases, I think including the trivia in a special "==Trivia==" section adds flavor and interest to the piece without interfering with the scholarly remainder. ClairSamoht 15:34, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
So what you're talking about is notable trivia and should be prose inside some section. See [1] for a notable trivia information turned into another section and being kept in the article (The trivia section becomes an attributes section). I hope it helps you picture the non-notability criteria for trivia sections. Lincher 13:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

It's implicit in 3 & 4 that there is a clear, unambiguous definition of the topic. But, for example, I can't figure out if the topic of USA is the geographical region or the contemporary nation state resulting from European colonization. It makes a big difference in how the non-white races are discussed. Fourtildas 05:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification of citations criteria

Criteria 2b says

This appears contradictory. Looking at the first Wikilink under Wikipedia:Cite_sources#How_and_where_to_cite_sources, three different citation styles are given (Embedded HTML links, Harvard referencing, and Footnotes). And the second Wikilink, the inline citation guide, also gives the same three citation styles. So what is the difference between "citation of its sources" (which is essential) and "inline citation" (which is only desirable)? I ask this because there are many articles that show sources, but never cite them. In the case of a Reference section at the bottom of a article, theoretically there should be citations using Harvard referencing (Author, Year) in the article. But I have never seen this used. To clarify this, the criteria should say either that "citation of sources is essential", i.e., mandatory or "citation of sources is desirable", i.e., optional, but not both. RelHistBuff 13:29, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

OK. The source is somewhat a reference section where there is a bibliography of what has been used to create the article. The inline citation is the part of work when people link the bibliography to sentences to source a statement or an idea mentioned in the article. This thus adds little numbers in superscript beside the text. Does this help you? Lincher 13:35, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I understand that a reference section is a bibliography of sources. But the problem is the sentence "the citation of its sources is essential" contradicts "the use of inline citations is desirable, but not mandatory". Looking at both guides, I find that "citation of sources" and "inline citations" are the same. Inline can be embedded HTML links ([1]arrow), Harvard (Author,Year), or footnotes (ref tags). What is a citation that is not inline? RelHistBuff 13:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we should change the first wikilink to the page Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style instead. I have just noticed that no information is given in the MoS on how to make a reference section and to add citations to it ... maybe because it is too easy. Lincher 14:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I think there is a problem with the definition of the word "citation". Citation to me means the "a quoting of an authoritative source for substantiation". That is what appears to be the meaning in WP:CITE guide. I believe you use the word to mean "a source so cited; a quotation", hence making citations to you means only making a reference list. Is that correct? If only a reference list is required then it should clearly state that.

  • a reference list of sources is mandatory. The citation of sources is left to the authors' discretion.

If citing sources is required, we should be clear about it. I would recommend

I, myself, prefer the tougher standard, the latter. RelHistBuff 15:15, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I have to agree with you both suggestions are good, I don't know why we don't ask to comply with the citation style. If I can remember, it maybe has to do with the fact that we want to have sources given for good articles and leave the proper citation format for the featured articles format. I would like to see another reviewer voice his opinion on that subject. Lincher 16:37, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I've always considered inline-citation format something that, since it's mandatory in

FA's, can have a more lax sort of thing here, citations have to be there, but they don't actually have to be formatted properly. But that's just my opinion, I don't fail articles for not having citations in inline format, just if they basically aren't there. Homestarmy 19:39, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

It's good that you get more opinions on this. I just wanted to note why I think the GA standards should not be lax. I believe the idea of GA status was to recognize good, quality articles with less bureaucracy. Therefore the editorial standards should remain high, but the process could be simplified. The latter has been done with the current nomination/delisting processes. Inline citations will not only produce quality articles, but simply requiring them has a knock-on positive effect. The work required to get proper citations is significant enough to reduce POV, avoid edit wars, etc. I found this to be the case in articles I have worked on. If inline citations are not required, then it is too easy to make a simple list of basic references and then edit in POVs surreptitiously. Hence, quality is lowered and reviewers have to be more diligent looking for POV-creep. That's why I'd like GAs to require inline citations just as FAs require them. RelHistBuff 09:52, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Oops, I wrote "GA's" instead of "FA's" x_x Homestarmy 12:26, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I understood what you meant. By the way, I saw your comment in the Eurosia Fabris talk page. There are many other examples of GA candidates that were failed by reviewers who felt that the articles should have had inline citations. I believe the reason is because the WP:CITE guide which is considered "essential" actually requires inline citations and not just reference lists! Plus the reviewers want quality as well even if the current GA standard is ambiguous and contradictory. Therefore we should get this resolved as soon as possible so that the reviewers are on solid footing. RelHistBuff 12:40, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I guess that in order to achieve having good articles that are sourced but not necessarily well inline cited, it would be better to have your first example of policy :

  • a reference list of sources is mandatory. The citation of sources is left to the authors' discretion.

With that, there will be less confusion between what to ask as for the GA criteria. Lincher 14:15, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I think I could go either way on this, on the one hand, if it isn't required then we can get more articles, but on the other, the articles we do get will probably have a, well, more "Good" look. Homestarmy 14:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I will go with whatever is the consensus decision, but as I said previously, my preference is the tougher standard. Not sure if being tougher will reduce the numbers. I think most contributors are willing to do the extra legwork. That should be the GA motto - good quality with an easier path to get recognition. Other GA reviewers, please comment! RelHistBuff 15:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Oh wait, I just had a thought, if inline format became mandatory, we may have to delist the vast majority of all GA's -____-. Homestarmy 18:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Every article must state references that can be used to verify all the information in the article. That is a requirement. The manner in which those references are tied to the rest of the article is a matter of editor discretion (and should remain so). All articles should have a list of references at the bottom. An article on a broad topic may only need two or three good works of reference, like books. You wouldn't need to inline cite these sources, because the entire book relates to the entire article. I'd say inline citations in this case would be a misuse of the inline format (which is intended to tie a citation or quote to a specific sentence or paragraph). Science articles, on the other hand, may need to cite 15 papers, but may only pull a few important facts from each. In this case, an inline format, like ref tags, or Harvard citations would be almost mandatory, in order to make it clear which sources connect to which facts. Other articles need a combination. Some articles may use general sources (that shouldn't be inline cited), as well as a few papers or news articles (which should be inline cited).

Making a blanket requirement for the use of inline citations isn't a good idea. We'd find ourselves failing legit articles, forcing unnecessary labor on editors, and causing the phenomenon (which is already pretty bad here), of just taking a 'general' source, throwing it into a ref tag, and then just sprinkling the ref tag around a few times so that it looks good. Its OK to have a distinction between the two types, and treat them differently. The important thing is that the information in the article be verifiable. Phidauex 18:51, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

What you say sounds good and I agree totally but what if an article comes here without references or with poor referencing (e. g. 2 internet sites references) then adding inline citations will solve the problem as we know that all the sentences in the text have been fact checked. Altough if we only ask that people who nominated for GA add a reference section we don't even know if the references added pertain to the article's content (and I know we should assume good faith) ... this could create another Sigenthaler event that would crush the GA process.
Another point is, with the rule we have now with 2 wikilinks pointing to the inline citation reference guide (of Manual of Style) the reviewers and the nominators don't even know how to follow that rule. For that matter, we are trying to find a way to have a good rule that will be applicable to all articles and as such, be easy to understand and to use. Lincher 19:25, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
In response Homestarmy, I disagree that GAs would need to be delisted. I have scanned through many articles and almost all GAs that passed through the current nomination process already have inline citations. Most that do not use them were passed in the old "slap-on-the-GA-template" days and these would need to be reexamined anyway. If there are articles that are clearly good enough but don't have them yet, then a simple message on the talk page to the authors about the new standard should be good enough. In response to Phidauex, I would claim that the reviewer's jobs will be made easier, not more difficult. If someone sprinkled ref tags around, it would be rather obvious. But if there are no inline citations, the job is made more difficult as reviewers will spend a lot of time wondering if something is disputed or may be unsourced or original research. If there are inline citations, then such items are become verifiable. Without them, a reviewer (or reader) will have to challenge the items in the talk page and the reviewer spends extra time putting the GA nomination on hold. We would not be failing "legit" articles, just articles that are not up to editorial standards. If a blanket requirement of inline citations is not a good idea, then why do FAs require them? RelHistBuff 11:30, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Eh, fine then. But on your last question, I suspect the reason is because Fa's are supposed to represent our "Finest work", and GA's are only supposed to represent, well, "good work". It's the difference between "Good" and "Excellent" that is supposed to divide GA's and FA's, and inline citations just plain make articles look like more work was put into them and that it is really compleated, after all, it's an easy system to use to check references if readers want to kow something, whereas hyperlinks just kind of get repetitive sometimes. Homestarmy 13:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

How about this proposal for criterion 2b?

  • a reference list of sources is mandatory. The citation of these sources (inline citations) is left to the authors' discretion. However, it is strongly recommended to use them to show claims that are verifiable against reliable sources.

Inline citations remain optional, but it is stated clearly that they are preferred. RelHistBuff 14:28, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

As I read it, the use of
Lots of companies have great ideas<ref>"Use The News", Maria Bartiromo, ISBM 0-06-662087</ref>
is an inline citation just as much as WP:CITE. The use of a literal citation
 Maria Bartiromo says "Lots of companies have great ideas" in her 2001 best-seller, "Use The News"
cites a source, but it's not an inline citation that generates a list of references. A bibliography at the bottom of the article, with no way to match up statements in the article to the source, does not (IMO) constitute a citation.
I'd argue that citing a source is mandatory, but in cases where you need to point out that there is no consensus, the literal citation has the benefit of easily showing the users who is lined up on each side of a controvery. I favor of the current wording. Citations are essential, so users can easily check the source of a statement, but the form of the citation is a matter of preference. ClairSamoht 15:10, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
OK, but then what do we do with an article that only provides a list of references and no match up of statements with the sources (i.e., no literal or inline citations)? As an example, I point out Talk:Mission San Juan Capistrano. I delisted the article for that reason (someone relisted it right back without going through the proper process, but that's another subject). If one believes it fails the GA standard, then we really should tighten the wording of criterion 2b, because I have seen that some authors believe that just listing the sources passes the criterion. RelHistBuff 08:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
This article is of GA standard and passes the criterion 2a for the reason that it states the sources used. Inline citations are not necessary for the GA status unless some statement are blatant NPOV issues or original research, for everything else (there's mastercard) ... just giving the sources is fine and that is what the consensus was say 3 months ago when this rephrasing of the criterion was done. Lincher 11:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
In that case, then please change or clarify criterion 2b. It should say "the citation of its sources is optional". To me, "essential" sounds like it is mandatory.

RelHistBuff 13:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Lincher, I don't see any blatant POV issues at Mission San Juan Capistrano, but I can't see how you can possibly determine that criterion 2a and 2d have been met. Even one sentence fragment will serve to illustrate the problem. How would one determine that "An estimated 2,000 former inhabitants (mostly Native Americans) are buried in unmarked graves" is not original research? Where's the number 2000 coming from? Who says that the unmarked graves are filled with former inhabitants? Who says that they are Native Americans?
Tom User comes along in January, sees the figure 2,000, and says to himself, "Hey, I was there last year. There were surely 2400 graves, maybe more." He changes the number to 2400. Then he notices a typo, and changes that in a second edit. People looking at the diff only see the typo correction, and the number change goes unnoticed. Dick Wiki comes along in March, and says to himself, "You know, in societies like that, if a couple of people died at the same time, they would have put them in the same grave." and he adjusts the number to 2650. Seconds later, someone changes the layout. Other editors see only the layout change in their diff, and don't notice the number change. Harry Expert comes along in May, and says, "They buried relligious artifacts in certain rites, and I bet half of those so-called graves aren't really graves at all" and changes the number to 1325. Then he makes another edit, adding some fact which is obviously true. People see the second change, believe it, and trust that the first change was benign as well. Someone who worked on the article in 2004 sees it in July, changes the number back to 2,000, but that vandalism gets reverted.
So how do you decide that the 2000 number is correct? You verify it. But if you don't know where that number came from, you can't. There are eleven resources listed at the bottom of the page, and at least six of them are books. Are you going to go to the library and request interlibrary loan of six books, then wait six weeks or longer for them to arrive, in order to verify that information? Are you going to buy $300 worth of books? Even if the books were on bookshelves 20 feet from your computer, are you going to read six books in order to find out which number is correct?
When looking for a needle, the haystack at the bottom of a page doesn't cut it. It doesn't accomplish what we need to accomplish as we cite sources:
  • To show that your edit isn't original research.
  • To ensure that the content of articles is credible and can be checked by any reader or editor.
  • To help users find additional reliable information on the topic.
  • To improve the overall credibility and authoritative character of Wikipedia.
  • To reduce the likelihood of editorial disputes, or to resolve any that arise.
  • To credit a source for providing useful information and to avoid claims of plagiarism.
  • To ensure that material about living persons is reliably sourced and complies with Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons.
Mission San Juan Capistrano doesn't meet the standards for a Good Article. It's well-written, fairly broad in coverage, not blatently POV, it's quite possibly stable, and it's nicely illustrated - but the heart of an encyclopedia is content you can trust. It doesn't even meet the "acceptable" threshold for content. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 14:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Wait, inline citations is mandatory now? When did this happen? Who knows how many articles we'll have to remove from the list now, and if an article is referenced by books that nobody except a single editor has, then it would be fairly difficult for people to make Good Articles. Homestarmy 12:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I have read 25% of the prose of the article and I can see your point about a necessity for having inline citations. This plus the talk that was carried on the Talk page of the GAC led met to think that inline citations are necessary, and I am now voicing with all you guys in saying that there is a need for this.
As for your comment, Homestarmy, we have changed it because there was a consensus at WP:GAC's talk page to change this to have it mandatory for the reason that it is useful in removing any POV, NOR or WP:V issues that would be in articles. That is another way to ask people to have their article more NPOV and more sourced. To make it clearer, only real POV, NOR or WP:V issues would be asked to give out citations in order to show that these statements are based on facts. It will be an easier process to remove unsourced statement thus inproving the quality of the process.
The old GAs will be reviewed in due time, once everything is settled on the talk page at WP:GAC. Lincher 14:39, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, thinking about it, I guess this requirement isn't too bad, but i've been randomly looking at a bunch of articles on the list, and a really quite substantial amount of them have no inline citations, but a good looking list of references anyway. (I've been notifying a few talk pages about this and recommending people convert stuff) And what does this leave hyperlinks, their not in actual citation format, but they are serving sort of like citations, just not written out as a description at the bottom. Homestarmy 16:13, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Hyperlinks ARE inline citations - they're just not Wikipedia:Footnotes. I prefer footnote citations, but hyperlinks are easier for new or casual editors. (Wikilinks are NOT citations at all, obviously, since they don't qualify as Wikipedia:Reliable Sources.) References at the bottom of the page aren't citations, since they don't verify facts in the article, they simply provide a haystack in which one can hopelessly look for needles. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 17:10, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
That's what I think too, hyperlinks should be turned into any of the footnote styles but we can accept GA article if they only have that default of having hyperlinks instead of inline citations for the sweep. Lincher 17:32, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Short?

Quote: "these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (15kb or less) in mind." is this really still true? Most of the articles in WP:GA and WP:GAC are far from short. Perhaps we need to think of a new statement to replace that one.--Konstable 00:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so, it was added awhile ago by User:Worldtraveller, but I think we recently changed the "recommended size" up to like 25 kb on the GA candidates page anyway. I personally never liked the idea to discourage large articles in the first place but some people seem to feel it has merit. Homestarmy 00:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA refs

I have returned the refs section to the previous version. There have been discussions on mandatory inline cites, but no consensus. There is no basis in policy for requiring inline citations (just as there is no basis for requiring a minimum number of sources). In fact, WP:IC specifically says inline cites need only be used when a statement requires it. If an article makes a dubious or obscure statement, then it should be sourced. And if all those statements come from the same source, there's no problem with that.

Arbitrary changes that make it easier to fail articles is no way to deal with the backlog. Kafziel 17:42, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

For everybody's information, it is not a way to clean the backlog to begin with, it is a way to have clear cut criteria in order to ask clear things from the editors.
Question for you : What if a statement is POV, WP:V or WP:NOR? Do you leave it as it is and state that the article is one of these three or do you request an inline citation?
Answer (without my change) : I cannot ask for inline citations because it is not in the criteria and thus cannot request such a hassle from the editor. I have therefore no choice than to put a big NPOV/V/NOR tag on the article on the premise that the article doesn't comply with any when an inline citation would have done the job.
Answer (with my change) : I can ask for an inline citation, if they add it, fine. If not, they don't really want to write the perfect article as their article will have such a request on the FAC.
Please give your answer to the above question in your answer. Lincher 18:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
That's not true. If a statement seems POV, inline citations are called for. That doesn't require a change here, though; it's already stated at WP:IC. Not every article makes contentious statements. If the article contains information you're simply not sure about, such as technical specifications or historical information, it's your job to use the sources provided in the reference section to find confirmation. Including inline citations is helpful for lazy researchers, but it's not mandatory. Kafziel 18:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
It is mandatory in every peer-reviewed journal whatsoever. It is necessary to have embedded citations when documents are used as a source in order to help the reviewer or the reader find complements about the statement. And for your information, Wikipedia:Inline Citation is not a guideline nor a policy, it is an essay. It is there because it expresses the idea of a minority of wikipedians. We need to have guidelines that can be understood by themselves or with the help of the WP:MOS. And for that reason, Wikipedia:Citing sources is the appropriate place to find what we need to wikilink to and this states that people need to give inline citations. Lincher 18:29, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Please show me where at WP:CITE it says that inline citatations must be used at all times. Kafziel 18:40, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Would a quick-onceover template help reduce the backlog?

How about his as a way of reducing the backlog?

We create a {{GA-NWIH}} template. Editors would be encouraged to take a quick glance at articles within 24 hours of nomination. If the article is seriously deficient, the editor marks the article {{FailedGA|14 September 2006}}{{GA-NWIH|NPOV|~~~~}} or {{FailedGA|14 September 2006}}{{GA-NWIH|Citations|~~~~}} or whatever, with the NWIH template generating text saying that a quick onceover showed that the article is seriously deficient in the area of (first parameter) and this needs to be corrected before a full appraisal is done, signing it with the reviewer's name.

If the article doesn't fit in the "no way in hell" category, then the reviewer edits the nomination to add Q1 - ~~~~ to the end, indicating that he's given the nomination a once-over.

This doesn't actually change the procedure at all. An editor can opt to review an article even though it hasn't yet gotten a Q1. (Usually, I review from among the oldest articles, but today, I reviewed one that had been nominated 20 minutes earlier. The subject looked intriguing.) But someone can do a Q1 if he only has five or ten minutes, instead of the 1-2 hours needed to do a complete review, and those who hate telling editors that their article is really, really, sucky, can more easily find articles that aren't nearly so terrible.

By getting a quick response back to the NWIH articles, their editors can go back to improving them (they've stopped, because the article should be stable), and the reviewers can spend more time on articles that may have half a chance of getting the GA. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 20:15, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Ha ha ha... NWIH... I like that. :) I don't know that there's really that much of a problem with a backlog as far as size goes; age seems to be the biggest problem, particularly with long articles, and I don't think this will fix that. But I do think the idea is good, and could speed up the overall GA process. Weeding out the ones that don't have a snowball's chance would be a start, so long as the specific reasons are provided.
It's not a bad idea. Some articles don't need to be read in their entirety to be failed; it's just obvious from the start they're not up to scratch. I don't think we need any extra bureacracy to deal with this though. If an article is way off the mark just say so, and fail it. --kingboyk 11:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I think another problem that causes backlogs is that too many people see GA as a step along the path to FA. It's not. Having a GA stamp on a talk page doesn't get an article any points; most reviewers at FA don't give a damn about GA, and they never will. Too many people get GA and then march happily on to FA. What did they come here for? I think if people understand that this isn't a Peer Review service, the submissions (particularly the long ones) might go down a bit. For instance, there's no reason anyone should waste time making Vincent van Gogh a Good Article. It should be Peer Reviewed (in fact, it already has been) and sent to Featured Article Candidates.It might be a good idea to enact some way of giving an article a "Q1" and saying, "This article is overqualified. Send it to FA, and if it fails there, then we'll review it." I'm sure FAC would bitch about that if it's not used sparingly, but it might help. Just a thought. Kafziel 20:38, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't help get an FA for the reasons you've given. However, it's an adequate measure of quality for an article which aspires to be featured one day, and a nice way of giving credit to authors of merely "very good" articles (folks love to get badges don't they!). I personally wouldn't take an article to FA without putting it through GA first; I know that if it fails here it has not a hope in hell at FA. --kingboyk 11:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citation method

Inline citation is mandatory now? I don't think that's a good choice, and from a quick skim of one of the sections above, I don't think I see a consensus on making it mandatory. If nobody objects, I'm going to change it back to say that while proper citation is mandatory, the citation style used is not. --Kjoonlee 10:35, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

From rereading the section, it looks like people were surprised about the change. I'll change it shortly. --Kjoonlee 10:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
And as User:Gimmetrow has pointed out, even Wikipedia:What is a featured article? doesn't mandate one style of citations. --Kjoonlee 10:51, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Please see the talk page of WP:GAC where most of the discussions concerning this issue took place. RelHistBuff 11:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Where specifically? I couldn't find any discussions there. Not even in the archives of the talk page. --Kjoonlee 11:07, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_candidates#Citation_of_sources_should_be_required_for_GA. RelHistBuff 11:12, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I strongly oppose any such requirement. Some articles derive from a few pages in a standard reference and will always do so; regular number is the first example I can think of, but there are other and better articles of the same class. GA began as an informal project; that is the sole justification for the looseness of its proceedures. It should not be making demands that will worsen the encyclopedia. Septentrionalis 18:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Inline citations make encyclopedias worse? I don't think i've heard that argument before... Homestarmy 18:26, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
No they make some articles worse; please look at Regular number and imagine it with <ref>Conway and Guy, 146</ref> at the end of every sentence. Septentrionalis 19:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
There is a consensus about this point, so one voice of opposition, and one not too well founded, is not enough to change the guideline. Please discuss, but do not edit the page unless there is a consensus to do so. Bravada, talk - 18:34, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
I count two voices of opposition in this section alone. Septentrionalis 19:20, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Still, if there was a consensus to make the WIAGA sound like that, you now need a consensus to change it too. Secondly, you don't need a ref at the end of each sentence, one per paragraph would more than suffice if there is a single source for every one of those. And the article you pointed it is very far from GA - there is little chance any GA could have a single source, and a high chance something could be added to an article written using a single source from another source. Please do not disrupt the WIAGA. Bravada, talk - 19:52, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Another example is Scalar-vector-tensor decomposition; which says everything needed to be said about the subject, except a picture, and is from two sources. Again, many short biographical articles can be written from, say, DNB, the Complete Peerage, and the 1911 Britannica. Most articles do, of course, require inline citation; and it should be encouraged. But it should not be mandated where it is not helpful; as it says in WP:POINT, Wikipedia is inconsistent. Septentrionalis 21:47, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
If I may, that Scalar-vector-tensor article has no body, meaning it can't have a lead into anything, so fails the GA criteria that way. I assume that at times, when an article is structured to actually comply with the manual of style, the areas which need or don't need an inline citation become more apparent. Homestarmy 21:51, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't making a GA nomination; I would do so there, not here. But adding an intro would not change the fundamental situation: some articles are written from content that fits on one or two pages of a source - and this is one of them; because that's all that can be said on a given subject. Once the sources have been cited, (preferably in two or three versions, I agree) they need not be cited again. Septentrionalis 03:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
One could make extremely short articles citing only one page as a source. Such an divided encyclopaedia is theoretically possible as Wiki is not written on paper. But this is not desired. Most likely someone will come along and suggest Regular number be merged into Babylonian mathematics. Once merged, the first sentence referring to regular numbers would have a citation to the proper page in Conway and Guy. RelHistBuff 09:10, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree. When that happens (and I hope it doesn't happen until we have section redirects), the merged article should have in-line references. They should be normal usage. But they are inappropriate in some articles, some of which are good articles. Septentrionalis 18:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed, and deplored elsewhere [2] the trend towards insistence on inline citations, and I believe you will find a number of editors who disagree with mandatory inline citation, but have not taken cognizance of this discussion. Setting Wikipedia-wide standards (which is what this effectively does) should not be done by consensus of a relatively small group.
As for inline citations, sometimes they are a good idea, sometimes not. Paper encyclopedias rarely footnote: our main reason for so doing is to make it easier to verify an article. In a long and complex article, and especially one with controversy, this is fine, but consider short articles like Thomas West, 2nd Baron West. While I know that this article can be improved, it is unlikely to grow much. Its sources run about a page each of relevant material, and in-line citations would add nothing to the article, except to make it look strange. Are short articles to be excluded from being "good" articles? If so, I contend that will encourage logorrhea. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:52, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, a bad example - the above Baron West is very far from GA standards, and I believe he's even borderline notable. For examples of well-inline-referenced relatively short Good Articles, see e.g. Joseph Hazelwood or Autobianchi Primula. It didn't hurt to do those inline references, and they can prove helpful in many ways. The occurence of a Good Article completely and forever relying on one source only is unlikely - I would actually have some problems with passing a GA nom with just one source. I don't see a problem here. Bravada, talk - 21:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

  • It was decided before I joined Wikipedia that all British Peers are notable: it would be too tedious to re-examine that question, at least until we get section redirects. Also, if you see one source rather than two, I suggest you clean your screen. I cited this article as an example not of an article that is GA except for the lack of inline citation, but rather of an example of an article that, even if one made a concerted effort to bring it up to GA standard, would probably never be long enough to make inline citation look anything but silly. For that purpose, it is a good example, unless you are making a ruling that the subject is inherently not GA material.
  • On the other hand, you chose medium-sized articles, not short ones for your examples. Four pages on IE set for medium font is not a short article. Some articles never should exceed three paragraphs: do you exclude those from being GA, and if so, why? Unlike FA, there is no limit to the number of GA's, and shouldn't the project be promoting good writing of the appropriate size to the subject? Robert A.West (Talk) 13:16, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I chose the articles I know which are relatively short by GA standards. I believe there aren't many subjects that there could be GAs on that would be shorter than those. Even the GAs on really insconsipcious astronomical objects are of similar length. But that's not the problem here. I simply can't understand why an article would look "silly" with inline citations, I am actually of a totally opposite opinion. Even that is not the actual problem, but the fact that we should not dismiss something on the account that it looks silly to some people - there are stuff in the MoS that are debatable in a similar fashion (i.e. not to everybody's esthetic liking). Bravada, talk - 18:40, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
GA's began as an informal project for articles too short to make a Featured Article. I am sorry to see that it has become the opposite on both points; especially since it does not appear to have secured the advantages of strict proceedure in the process.
I am also sorry to see that Bravada cannot see that an article with superfluous footnotes looks silly; others can. However, the fact that he is arguing purely from personal opinion makes this page an essay; on which he can say whatever he likes. Septentrionalis 20:13, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
If articles are failed or not pertaining only to the citation criteria we will go on a case-by-case. Meaning that the article will come to WP/R or be reviewed by another reviewer and the decision about the missing/having too many citations will be settled. This discussion should be closed and the criteria should remain still for the next quarter i'd say. Please stop arguing about a subject we will never find consensus about and will never agree on. If ONE disagrees with the GA process, then send the article to A-class (which is better than GA on the assessment list) or bring it to FAC where some inline citation is also required but stop making modifications to the WIAGA. Lincher 20:25, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
(replying to Pmanderson) I am expressing my personal opinion just as you do. Estehtics apart, there are many more substantial arguments in favor of inline citations which were put forward and agreed with during the discussion which lead to the discussion over the current WIAGA. Please do not disrupt WIAGA only because you find something "looking silly". Bravada, talk - 00:01, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
All I want is a recognition that your position is disputed. Please stop this; it could be mistaken for bullying. Septentrionalis 01:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
The thing is, among the vast majority of GA reviewers (and members of the Good Article Project) is not this big dispute that you are trying to make it to be. There are some editors in certain projects who don't like the change and all have free will to choose not to comply with Good Article Criteria and such not submit for GA consideration. Among the reviewers who are trying to heed Jimbo's call to elevate the quality of Wikipedia's articles and get more GA articles eventually to FA, this was a mostly well received and ardently sought for change.Agne 08:15, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dealing with Bad Faith objections on controversial topics

As a semi-regular reviewer of articles in which I have some knowledge, I'm seeing that there is an issue with the stability provision that is the cause of an recurring problem that can result in the de-listing of otherwise GA articles.

The stability provision is too easily gamed by pov-pushers on controversial topics to discredit articles and gain the upper hand in content disputes. Once an article has achieved GA status, pov-pushers can threaten and have made bad objections at WP:GA/R over bogus/contrived NPOV disputes, thereby forcing questionable content into article in the interest of keeping or regaining GA status.

Furthermore, the very nature of controversial topics, magnets for ideological ax-grinders, precludes them from being particularly stable. Now of course no reasonable person expects articles on controversial topics to be completely stable, but when reasonable, expected instability for the topic is cited as a justification for de-listing alongside other possible issues, some of which are clearly made in bad faith, then it becomes an issue. Add the absence of a meaningful metric for what constitutes acceptable/unacceptable stability, and you have a recipe for disputes of de-listing and more opportunities for gaming of system in the confusion.

Clearly some accommodation needs to be codified for articles on contentious topics, meaning a change to the provision. Any provision that fails to take into account pov-motivated objections is flawed. Failing to fix this issue puts GA at risk of becoming irrelevant to a large segment of WP articles - those on perennially controversial issues. FeloniousMonk 19:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Felonious, I think your taking the review of the creation-evolution controversy a bit too far, Agne has never shown any signs of being a POV pusher, and anyone can make mistakes on the stability criteria. Besides, most edit wars concerning the topics I think your talking about end rather quickly, since one side generally gets blocked for not knowing the policies. Homestarmy 19:26, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images

Attribute #6 says it must "contain images" - does that mean there should always be multiple images on a Good Article? Or would a single image be enough in most cases? Essexmutant 17:10, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I feel two or three should be just right. --Siva1979Talk to me 17:42, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
The rest of the guideline says "if possible" basically, so you don't actually need any images at all. Homestarmy 19:38, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
This criterion would apply to old and ancient history articles that archeaologists haven't uncovered enough artefacts to permit us to show any images. Or, say, if images or somebody aren't PD and fair use alternative isn't envisioned then no image is ok too. Lincher 18:12, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

People are starting to fail articles or put them on hold because images don't have a fair use rationale. The guidelines merely say that the images must be tagged. In many cases - the use of an album sleeve in an album article for example - the tag ought to be enough, unless the article is at FAC. Can we either stick to the guidelines please or make them explicitly state that fair use rationales are required for fair use images in GA nominated articles. --kingboyk 11:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to my recent hold on Talk:Only_Fools_and_Horses. Please correct me if I am wrong but I believe this is already a Wikipedia policy. According to Wikipedia's Fair use policy, the image description page should have
  • For each article for which fair use is claimed, the name of the article and a "fair use rationale" as explained in Wikipedia:Image description page. The rationale must be presented in a manner that can be clearly understood and which is relevant to the article in question.
Or did I misunderstand something? If so, then I will correct it. RelHistBuff 12:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
The criteria (as it was meant) should read like this : If you don't have an image, then you don't absolutely need one but if you have image(s) then they should properly be following the policies/guidelines WP has for such pictures. And so, if articles have FU images with no FU rationale, we put articles on hold ... normally they are easy to modify unless the page is packed with images (then removing images will be more appropriate). Lincher 12:19, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Considering how strict Wikipedia is about copy vio with images, I do think we should ensure any article that is listed as a "Good Article" should be at least properly tagged and not in violation of major Wikipedia policy. As for whether or not the article needs images, I think it depends on the content. The guideline says
6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic. In this respect:

       (a) the images are tagged and have succinct and descriptive captions;
       (b) a lack of images does not in itself prevent an article from achieving Good Article status.

If an article needs an image to illustrate it topic (like an article about a painting or something that has to be described in the article) then it certainly should have an image. But not every article "needs" one (like most biographies) and that is why the criteria is somewhat subjective and needs to be applied on an article by article basis. Agne 08:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citation requirement 2b

As presently worded, this requirement would seem to be higher than the sourcing requirement for featured articles. The featured article criteria only demand the provision of a "References" section in which sources are set out and, where appropriate, complemented by inline citations, whereas this list states that the citation of sources using inline citations is required. Just pointing out that it might be worth clarifying that in-line cites need to be used where appropriate, not for every single sourced fact. -- (Lee)Bailey(talk) 18:27, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

No consensus was reach for the change you ask for the reason that it is up to the reviewer to, in a friendly and unbiaised way, state which citations are needed and to clearly say why they are needed (NPOV, OR, biased statement or non-reliable source used). A month ago there were lenghty discussions pertaining to this subject and nothing was solved. People are inherently afraid of adding inline citations and for that matter, having a stricter criterion makes citing articles way better. Take Criticism of Microsoft for example where it is missing citations but in some sense it already has enough to pass GA. Lincher 22:10, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
But GA shouldn't be stricter than FA. FA only requires in-line citations where appropriate. If there was never any consensus for the present wording, all the more reason to change it to reflect actual pratice. -- Bailey(talk) 22:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, "citation of its sources using inline citations is required" doesn't say citations have to be everywhere, if you wanted to get technical about it, this criteria alone might mean you could just have a single inline citation. Of course, that's not "well-referenced"..... Homestarmy 01:10, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I see that, but without the "where appropriate" clause, there's room for misinterpretation; I encountered an editor just last week who believed this meant every single factoid in an article needed an in-line cite. Given that there's a lot of confusion about this subject, would it harm anything to borrow FA's wording and perhaps link to policy/guidelines for clarification as to what "where appropriate" means? -- Bailey(talk) 15:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criterion 2b disputed

How many people have to add a dispute or change that criterion before it's allowed to stay. There is a dispute. I was very disappointed to see edits like this one, which seem to claim that GA regulars have some special privilege in determining consensus for GA rules. You do not; we're all Wikipedians here. -- SCZenz 02:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The concept of consensus is a simple one. If you disagree with a decision that was made with a previous consensus, open up a new formal discussion to have the consensus change. Labeling something as dubious because you disagree with is not helpful, especially when that item was discussed to consensus by a team of the GA reviewers who use the guideline. Your status as "Wikipedian" is never questioned or in jeopardy, but you are under no obligation to participate in the GA program if you disagree with how a previously formed consensus is utilized. Agne 07:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Here is a string of edits either rewording or disputing the citation statement, along with the editor who made them:
There are additional recent edits by Pmanderson and SCenz. Because the statement has been under constant discussion since it was added on Sep. 14, and because at least 5 editors have reverted it or marked it disputed, it seems likely to me that broad consensus was never reached. Even if consensus was reached, it no longer seems to exist. CMummert 11:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Compromise?

Can we all agree on my addition that "this criterion is disputed"...? As CMummert notes, a significant number of people have disputed it. Or do people outside the "team of GA reviewers" really not get a voice at all? -- SCZenz 16:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the Physics and Math editors (Out of the dozen or so projects and hundreds of other areas that GA articles affect) dispute it. That is a small group. As I compromise, I can see allowing mention of their dispute as well as their counter-proposal citation guideline. But just slapping the general "disputed" tag gives the appearence that it more broadly disputed then it really is and completely discounts the month long discussion and consensus building that among GA reviewers AND interesting editors who saw the prominent banner on the GAC nomination page. Agne 21:40, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The group that removes the assertion that it is disputed is also small. So? Septentrionalis 00:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Again, this is not just math and physics editors. Editors from almost all the sciences have objected. And "math and physics" is not one group or a small group but do very different groups with different interests and yes who agree to this. JoshuaZ 21:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Nobody seems to of brought up that proposed guideline of theirs to this talk page yet, we should probably discuss it, I for one think it has merit, (at least, when I read it it seemed pretty good) and would count in terms of whether an article has inline citation or not. (If I understand it correctly, at the beginning of paragraphs or sections, a few general books or references which cover the whole thing are cited, then nothing else needs to be since it all flows from those refs.) Homestarmy 22:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Somewhat. My reading of it is slightly more restrictive than that. It can be found at Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines. I also think that this isn't all about the 2b matter- discussions about a need for science citations had occured before, and this only helped spur the proposal onwards. JoshuaZ 22:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, if that ever becomes a guideline, then I think it would be easy enough to solve this problem by saying "where appropriate, and when applicable, where appropriate according to Wikipedia guidelines". (though if it becomes part of the MoS it could just say "where appropriate, in compliance with the MoS"). Homestarmy 22:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

There are at least two straw man arguments above.

  1. It's just a couple of WikiProjects: first, you should not that these are WikiProjects covering major areas of academic research. Second, about a dozen editors came to object to the wording of the line, on various GA pages, and as CMummert notes above there are about half a dozen people who have actively tried to edit the criterion. That is a significant number when compared with the number of "GA regulars", which seems to be around 10-20. If 10 editors disagree with 20 editors, then there's a dispute and there is not a consensus.
  2. It hasn't been discussed on this page: it was discussed on various GA pages a month ago. Then the argument was moved to WP:CITE, and we eventually started working on our own citation guidelines. None of this changes the fact that the GA requirement was disputed.
  3. There was prior consensus: I include this for completeness; I discussed it already above.

GA regulars do not have the authority to unilaterally declare the dispute resolved, without the agreement of those disputing it, of whom there are a significant number. Until it is resolved, the dispute should be aknowledged on the page. To continually sweep it under the rug seems to be a bullying tactic; if it were just applied to me, I would shrug it off and move on, but it's happened (as CMummert notes) to several editors. So all I can say is, please stop the constant reverting; criterion 2b is disputed, and a statement of that should be allowed to stand. We can by all means work on what the statement should say exactly; I still like "this criterion is disputed" as simple and accurate, rather than specifically identifying WikiProjects and all that. -- SCZenz 23:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

And Robert West and I objected, a couple sections above, on historical articles, as well as the sciences. Septentrionalis 00:54, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guidelines, citations...silliness?

I've looked at Wikipedia:What is a good article? and Wikipedia:What is a featured article?, point by point, and at this time, there is very very very little difference that I can uncover between the two other than "broad" vs. "comprehensive" coverage and a GA guideline explicitly recommending images. Otherwise, it seems like the GA process is designed to be a one Support = "you're in!" FA-lite process, whereas the FAC is designed to be more demanding in the hope that (most) everyone reviewing the nom can be satisfied and hopefully beat an article into an even-better state.

I'm sorry, but I don't see the point of the GA apparatus if it's going to request 98% of what an FA would - except rigorous review by more than one party. That makes it much more prone to reviewer error/oversight, seemingly trivial in distinction, potentially confusing to newer editors, and a hell of a lot of unnecessary extra work in running the GA process. If you're going to run it like this, you might as well allow it to be purely an assessment class (which is what I've been doing lately), and ignore the review process, since it only requires one reviewer's approval anyway. This will both speed up and vastly expand the GA project, as well as making the arguments over what constitutes a "Good article" the domain of the WP 1.0 grading scheme. Does this seem at least somewhat feasible? Girolamo Savonarola 00:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

One big difference I see is that FA explicitly states that an article must not have viewpoints representing Undue Weight, whereas the GA criteria don't so much, that's a bit of a difference. However, if you really want the GA criteria to be slightly more less than the FA criteria, I think the easiest way at this point would be to lower the number of things an article must adhere to concerning the Manual of Style, I mean, there's alot of stuff in there, and a good article probably doesn't need to comply with every little part of it necessarily. The Lead thing I think definently should stay, and rules concerning writing about fiction are pretty important, but there's probably stuff like how to write dates properly and other things that the GA system could specifically not look for. (I mean, do most people even know everything in the MoS to look for anyway? :/ )Homestarmy 01:24, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
My impression is that the two standards have been converging of late, and they have become quite close. One major difference (at least in theory!) is that the good article should be broad in coverage, rather than comprehensive (FA). I'm not sure those guidelines are always rigorously followed at either FA or GA, as it tends to depend on what the reviewer sees as missing in both cases (i.e. if they see something missing, they complain whether it's GA or FA). It may be that a GA reviewer should recommend adding X, Y to the article rather than requiring it. Another difference I've seen is an expectation for better writing standards at FA, though some bad English still slips through there.
I wonder if the solution here is to come up with some clear examples of GA and FA versions of the same article, and to use these to guide reviewers. I'm planning on coming up with a set of more honed examples as part of the WP:1.0 assessment scheme, perhaps based on this approach. Should we work on this together? Walkerma 05:29, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Savonarola. The whole GA system strikes me as a complete mess at the moment. To me, the procedure for passing GA is confused, lacks transparency and is prone to subjective judgements, meaning there may be little consistency in quality among successful GA candidates. I've seen many editors comment on the ridiculous convergence between FA and GA criteria. A clear difference needs to be established between the two, with standards "lowered" for GA. --Folantin 12:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Most of the time the subjectivity isn't much of a problem, and the Good Article review page normally stops most problems in my experience. Homestarmy 19:05, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, that doesn't cover the GA/FA convergence issue. In fact, I believe the two problems are related. Some GA candidates slip through the net with the most glaring faults unnoticed because reviewers are too busy elsewhere examining other candidates in microscopic detail. "Straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel", as it were. If you raise the standards for GA so there is little discernible difference between a GA and an FA, you increase the workload for reviewers, who don't seem to be able to cope with the extra burden. You'll also create a massive backlog. Therefore quality control is damaged, not enhanced by the so-called new "stricter standards".--Folantin 10:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Agreed with Folantin. At Agrippina I encountered exactly the kind of concerns I would expect at FA. The massive nitpicking over prose was just one example. Furthermore, extreme coverage IS now required for GA. I was asked by various reviewers to write up stubs for every single one of the singers that sang at the premiere, and to write some sort of review of all the recordings. This kind of behaviour completely negates the point of GA, if there is to be no difference in standard expected between GA and FA. Moreschi 12:15, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. This is why the assessment groups from several WikiProjects have just started to ignore the GA process entirely and use the GA class at their own discretion. There is a huge gap between B-class and A-class, so it makes sense to have a middle class anyway. That it's called GA is a convenient coincidence, but it does highlight the point that given the way the GAs are approved at the moment, you might as well just allow it to be assessed as such - it requires the same number of people (1). This will expand the GA project rapidly - and effectively, as the assessors usually have a subject interest and thus are knowledgeable. Although FACs have no burden to go to any other groups prior, an article at the moment can theoretically go through peer review, GA review, and then FAC. That's about 1.5 reviews too many, if you ask me. GA through relatively fast assessment is more logical and effective in the long-term. Will it be completely perfect and flawless? No, but then again, neither should the articles - it just needs to be good enough. Girolamo Savonarola 12:56, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we should get back to basics about the whole idea of what a good article should be. Let's look at it from the perspective of casual Wikipedia readers. What criteria do you think they might use for a "good article"? I'd say: is it useful? Is it helpful? Is it informative? Is it accurate? Is it comprehensible? They might be struck by glaring spelling mistakes or grammatical errors, but I doubt the vast majority of them will quibble over minor points of language use or subjective stylistic issues. In other words, I don't think the average reader is going to say, "They call this a good article? But it hardly uses any parataxis! I strongly disapprove of the use of the Ciceronian periodic sentence in an encyclopaedia". However, if they saw a GA containing prose like parts of Swedish literature at the moment it passed, for example, then I think they'd be quite within their rights to wonder what the hell we were playing at. --Folantin 13:08, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I still think it would be a good idea to not be so inclusive of everything in the MoS since so much of it just ends up being those tiny little improvements for consistancy in the end of an article's development, and that way, it would certainly make a bit more of a gap between FA and GA. Homestarmy 04:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Concerning "Well-written"

There's been a lot of discussion about Agrippina (opera). I do not consider the language of its version to be enough to pass it as a GA. I find the sentences and the paragraph too long for it to be "compelling". Can someone else comment?

Fred-Chess 12:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The guidelines say nothing about optimum paragraph or sentence length, which are almost wholly subjective matters. Swedish literature passed GA when large sections of it were barely comprehensible, let alone "well-written". I'm becoming seriously concerned about the seemingly arbitrary nature of the whole GA selection process.--Folantin 12:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
It is best to have issues resolved between editor and reviewer, but if that is not possible it can be brought to GA Review for more editors to look at it. --RelHistBuff 12:51, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Excellent idea. I'll move my concern there and consider this thread closed. / Fred-Chess 13:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The general issue isn't going to go away. Believe me. --Folantin 17:02, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

GA was intended, originally, to be a list of articles liked by consensus; in the same sense that article text is consenus: If a couple ofeditoras like something and nobody seriously objects, it'll be in there. We really should consider restoring that condition. Septentrionalis 01:36, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, "Well-written" is pretty ambiguous, and it does often take a couple editors to decide in GA reviews :/. Homestarmy 01:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prose and refs

I would like to see "the citation of its sources using an accepted form of inline citation is required" replaced with "thorough citation of its sources using an accepted form of inline citation is required, particularly when POV statements are made". References are necessary and the more inline cits for POV statements the better.

On a similar note, I find "compelling prose" to be far too subjective - one man's compelling is another's doggerel - , far too close to what it says at WP:WIAFA, and unnecessary. GA is not FA. "Adequate prose" - implying correct spelling and grammar and a style that isn't anachronistic and full of archaisms and obsolete verbiage - should be better. Moreschi 13:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Seconded as far as prose goes (see my comments above). "Adequate for its purpose", "comprehensible", "no obvious spelling mistakes or grammatical errors" - that's fine. The emphasis should be on "obvious" too. There's no need for long disquisitions on the merits of the Oxford comma (or whatever) in the assessment process. GA isn't the end of an article's editing history, after all. The grammar buffs can still have their way with it after it's passed.
Inline citations? Maybe. I think there's still a big controversy over this as far as science articles go. Screamingly obvious stuff shouldn't require inline citations either.
General remarks: let's get a sense of perspective about the whole concept of a "good article". Please.--Folantin 13:47, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
The thing about POV statements is that you have to have extremely good references to make them, even on very un-controversial things, which represent once and for all that something is or is not the mainstream and accepted viewpoint on something. And even then, there's still people who would probably not like it simply for POV's sake no matter how many refs you have :/. As for the science editors, their working on a guideline right now that should cover the inline citation thing for their kind of articles. Homestarmy 18:06, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA goals?

I'd like to see some discussion of the goals of GA. I'd like to emphasize quality, as well as emphasizing GA's role as a launching pad toward FA.

The current wording is just this:

However, there are also many articles containing excellent content but which have not yet reached Featured article standards or are unlikely at present to become featured due to very short length. So long as they meet certain quality standards and have passed through the Good Article review process, they may be listed as Good articles.

I'd like to see a more explicit mission statement. As I see it there is only one mission (but it has two subparts):

  1. The goal of the Good Articles project is to foster and encourage the highest quality standards in the encyclopedic articles on Wikipedia. As such, it has two distinct objectives:
    1. To serve as an intermediate step in the process of developing Featured Articles, offering guidance and rewarding outstanding work as it progresses to the highest standard of recognition in Wikipedia.
    2. To foster excellence in articles that are unlikely at present to become featured due to very short length.

My main point is this: GA is not for .. what's the word they use on consolation prizes... uh, "participant" .. whatever. It reflects high quality standards.. as I repeatedly state.. that are something on the order of 75% or 80% of FA.

Talk amongst yourselves. --Ling.Nut 17:31, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

That wording is a holdover from back when we were dealing with mostly shorter articles, but after some discussion, we just review all articles now short or not :/. I believe the original meaning was to recognize very short articles which couldn't possibly become FA's and yet were still exceptional resources, (sort of like mini-FA's) and were unlikely to often be visited by other editors due to obscurity or things like that. Many of the star type articles fit under that category, in addition to some of the train articles still up there. A few months ago, many people really objected to the GA system as a whole, especially FA people, so I don't think it would be a necessarily good idea to declare ourselves as a stepping stone to FA without some acknowledgment from FA people, it might still be jumping the gun. (Though I do see people noting the GA status of FAC's often....) To me, GA's reflect a somewhat ambiguous standard of, well, a good article, and yet aren't so ambiguous that it wouldn't be obvious to most readers why an article is, in fact, labeled Good. The articles won't normally be incredible and ready for FA immediately, but they'll be at a point that they would be pretty reliable for anyone to read out of an encyclopedia. The problem with the "Highest of standards" thing is that's right up there with FA criteria :/. Lastly, the GA system often results in editors getting something of a semi-peer review for their article, and I think this often helps editors get articles to a nearly finished state, so I think that might need some mention. Homestarmy 17:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  • You're describing the situation as it is; I'd like to up the ante a little. :-) Let's be WP:BOLD. This isn't directly editing/creating articles, but it directly impacts those editing/creating articles.
  • --Ling.Nut 17:50, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Hmmm. Does "fostering excellence" mean introducing even higher standards by the back door? Moreschi 17:52, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Not precisely. It means going thru the front door. I dunno about "higher standards." It seems to me (please correct me if I'm wrong) that some here may be arguing for lower standards.
My logic is simple:
IF an FA article would get an "A" in the class of a really strict teacher, then a GA article would get a "B."
I do not know why anyone would resist such a positive, proactive goal. I hope others could explain why.
--Ling.Nut 17:57, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not that the goal is wrong, its just I think its outside the scope of what the GA system ought to be, trying to raise articles up past FA status sounds more like the goal of the GA collaboration, not the GA system :/. (Also, our FA's are so good, I think an FA in a strict teachers class ought to get an A+) Homestarmy 18:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
yes but. Yes but surely GA is not a "participant" prize. Yes but surely the FA people would want to see someone act as a steppingstone to their front door; not guaranteeing success, but guaranteeing something that won't get WP:SNOW'd.
Yes -- From an intuitive standpoint, GA means to me, "You might not be able to get FA, but you certainly won't get WP:SNOW'd if you try.
Does that make any sense?
And the key point -- why is everyone set against the idea of improving the encyclopedia? Isn't that why we are here.. not in GA but in Wikipedia, I mean.--Ling.Nut 18:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
In my experience, the review of the article often gives editors much more than just a mere "participant prize". Of course, sometimes people still give bad reviews which aren't entirely helpful, but i've found that often times, those articles end up on the review page....Also, I don't know how FA people really see the GA thing right now. Alot of FA reviwers are very good at finding very minor errors, and yet still objecting to an article because of them, so often times I figure a GA probably would get snowed as a candidate :/. (Especially our current GA collaboration, dunno who reviwed it, but I don't think they noticed the second paragraph in the introduction....) Homestarmy 18:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't like this idea that GA should automatically be seen as preparation for an FA. GA should be an end in itself. If some authors then want to bring their article up to FA standards, that should be their decision. Editors at Wikipedia are volunteers. They might see GA status as a reward for spending their time and effort here, without wanting to go through the agonisingly long drawn out process of FA candidacy. They might also think their time was better spent writing two or three GAs instead of concentrating on a single FA. The more GAs there are, the better it is for this encyclopaedia. I noticed that there used to be a section setting out the differences between a Good Article and a Featured Article on the GA criteria page. In September, it seems a small group of users decided to remove this section in a bid to blur the distinction between the two. This isn't really on. For all the talk of "raising standards", regular GA reviewers seem unable to cope with the stress of enforcing the criteria as they are at the moment in an even manner, so an added workload is hardly going to make matters better. If GA criteria were returned to a reasonable level, then I think it would improve things all round: the encyclopaedia would benefit from the increased number of good articles; more editors would have the incentive to bring their contributions up to GA standard; and quality control at the GA candidacy and review would be much easier to maintain.--Folantin 18:34, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

IMO it's very simple. I am not against improving the encyclopaedia. Elsewhere I have argued for tougher referencing. Quite simply, GA cannot go too much farther with higher standards. If it does, the overlap with FA will become so self-evident that GA will get abolished. Already, the prose standards for GA and FA are very similar - both require "compelling" prose, and the wording of WIAFA makes "brilliant" sound non-compulsory. Certainly, however, I agree that much of the wording quoted above is out-of-date and needs revising. And I agree with much of what Folantin said: check out The Fairy-Queen. After a bit of hard work, GA there was an end in itself. Also please note a very helpful first reviewer who, having failed the article, spelled out for me what was wrong. This meant that fixing the problems was much easier. Moreschi 18:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Moreschi & Folantin, perhaps you can help me then. If you are in earnest about helping Wikipedia & about having a productive GA system, why is it that I -- and I am speaking only for myself -- feel so continually disrespected by your remarks? I'm not trying to start an argument. I am exploring calmly. Please also note, I'm not a fragile egg. I haven't had any problems with anyone else on Wikipedia so far.. communication probs, yes, but I haven't felt disrespected.
I:t seems that one or both of you simply disrespects GA... and esp. Folantin (not arguing! not namecalling! not mud-throwing! am discussing, hopefully) have been repeated dismissive, sniffy and disdainful. Please tell me... what gives? I ask in all god faith. In fact, if your answer angers me, I won't respond.
--Ling.Nut 18:43, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Again, I am left confused. My comments about the helpful reviewer at the Fairy-Queen were not an attack on anyone: I was trying to point out what was wrong with FredChess's revisions to the candidates page, as discussed elsewhere. Was it Folantin's comment that "regular GA reviewers seem unable to cope with the stress"? Not to pre-empt or anything, but I think he was talking about over-variable standards at GA: "enforcing the criteria as they are at the moment in an even manner". I really cannot see anything in either of our 2 posts that is a personal attack. We are simply commenting upon the system as we see it. Speaking for myself, we are hardly commenting incivilly, either. And if I do disrespect GA - well, I don't, but I'm hardly singing of the wonders of the current state of affairs - so what? I can, I think, choose to dislike a process if I want to. Moreschi 19:01, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Don't be confused. I wasn't talking about Fairy-Queen. The repeated statements that "GA is a joke." You can that isn't directed at me persoanlly.. OK, then it isn't. I agree it isn't. But it is disrespect. And if you disrespect a particualr process, and feel quite happy sharing your feelings of disrespect... why are you hanging around the group of people whose process you disrespect?
And the obvious answer is to improve it. But.. attitude counts as much as anything else. As with any other Wikiproject, GA is a social construct. Bandying about an attitude of disprespect is disruptive. You may think it is constructive, but it is not.
Thanks --Ling.Nut 19:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
"GA is a joke" - I think that's been said once. I don't, for the record, agree. Nor do I disrespect GA. I don't like the way it currently works, but that is not to say I disrespect it. The system that gave recognition to Dido and Aeneas, Venus and Adonis (opera), The Fairy-Queen, and Pro Milone is hardly worthy of disrespect. GA can work very well, and I would like to help out to improve matters. It isn't any more complex than that. Moreschi 19:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
One thing I think which may be lowering our credability is that there are still often some articles left on the list which aren't really GA's still, the criteria kept changing too rapidly in my opinion. Although FA has this problem as well, it seems like people notice it more on the GA list. Homestarmy 19:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Eh, I don't think so. A pretty thorough job was done of enforcing the introduction of inline cits when WIAGA was changed to make them mandatory. Moreschi 19:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Reply to Ling Nut: My view is that respect has to be earned. I don't respect the GA process as it stands because of the massive failings I've noticed in quality control. I have a perfect right to voice my concerns. Likewise, in a free country, people should be able to say "the law is an ass", without worrying whether they're hurting judges' feelings. You may not have intended this, but turning this into a personal matter comes over as an attempt to stifle valid criticism. I think it's much more constructive to get these issues out in the open and have a robust debate about them. Also, as far as I know, any WP editors are free to discuss the process here and nobody has elected an official GA review committee to decide on policy. Note: I have nothing against you (or Fred Chess) personally. --Folantin 19:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
People can reply to that as they wish, but can we please get back to the matter at hand? Which was...uhh...something to do with fixing GA?:) Best to all, Moreschi 19:39, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Although Agne27 notified many articles of their lack of compliance, I think he got sidetracked when he hit the scientific type articles, and I don't think every one of the one's he's reviewed have been checked up on. Besides, thanks to the science editors making a huge fuss over it, I don't really see them as mandatory, but since i'm in the minority anyway and most articles missing inline citations have other problems, I often end up agreeing with the citation needed people on articles anyway. Homestarmy 19:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Thanks for filling me in. Agne certainly got all the GAs I'd worked on/was aware of!! Anyway, seeing as that's the case, I can see as this would be a problem. Best, Moreschi 19:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

(remove indents) As I see it, there is one and only one problem with GA: anyone can pop in, pass an article, and disappear into the mist. The only fix.. is.. the dreaded B word (that would be "bureaucratization."--Ling.Nut 19:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Standards are occasionally too lenient when it comes to referencing, and prose standards are, conversely, too high, to the point where the standards applied have become indistinguishable with FA. WIAGA needs a reword. Moreschi 20:06, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
As of late, we seem to have been catching most people who try to sneak articles onto the list. Of course, a few might still be sneaking on, but people often check the list now anyway, we'll catch them all eventually probably. Homestarmy 20:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes. But rewording the standards is pointless if anyone can pop in and...
  • We shouldn't need to check twice. --Ling.Nut 20:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Technically speaking, anyone can add articles sneakily to the FA list too since that page isn't protected, but people watch that list as well. I also think that this discussion is getting off track from the point of GA and more into problems people see with the criteria.....Homestarmy 20:13, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  • By and large, WIAGA is obeyed. Rewording is therefore not pointless. What is more, adding bureaucracy negates the schtick of GA, which is that it is far less time-consuming, painful and bureaucratic than FA. Moreschi 20:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

  • I wanted a mission statement that sets high goals... and uh.. that didn't move forward... and I said (or was trying to say) we should have some way to check the efforts of reviewers (tag-team? an official list? an apprenticeship system?) and uhh.. that didn't seem to find favor, and so.. what do you want, Homestarmy?

(added comment) also, what you said makes sense moreschi. I am listening.--Ling.Nut 20:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, the short articles thing definently needs to be gone, I think the mission has more to do with getting constructive feedback now and recognizing articles which aren't FA's, but are still useful as encyclopedia articles. If we can be a stepping stone to FA I wouldn't mind that at all, since then stability of this system would probably be more assured since the FA system would perhaps rely on it more, but I really think there ought to be some sort of vote or poll on that first. Homestarmy 20:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Votes and/or polls are a necessity, agreed.
Let me clarify: are you saying, once and for all, that you do not want to see any effort directed to monitoring/improving the reviewers?--Ling.Nut 20:34, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me a bit odd to have one of the goals of GA be to improve reviewers, one would hope that the GA system's goals would necessitate reviewers to talk to each other from time to time on their own :/. However, there could still be other goals of course.Homestarmy 20:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

(remove indents): OK. Gotta quit for tonight; talk soon. Later. --Ling.Nut 20:57, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Just a note...

I can't talk. I shouldn't have been doing all the talking I have been. I enjoy talking too much, as my wife will tell you.

I wanna leave a note for the whole WIAGA question. I hope you won't come to any conclusions for a while; not at least 'til Dec. 16 when the semester ends. But of course you may think the need is urgent.

My position in a nutshell:

  1. I have said a billion times, I wanna see something like 70% - 75% - 80% of the TOTAL necessary cites actually cited. I would feel downright irresponsible with less! I do agree with Moreschi that cites are relatively more important than good writing, but...
  2. I would wanna see meaningful improvement in any writing problems occur during the period before and after the GA review. I don't wanna wave my hand at stuff that's pretentious, tangled, bloated, etc. I don't need to see it sparkle to get a GA; but I think the goal of GA requires improvement.. because...

Because although you guys reject my desire to see GA as a steppingstone to FA, I just couldn't live with my conscience if it didn't contribute meaningfully to all aspects of an article more often than not. If GA is not steppingstone to FA.. then at least.. it must be something that makes a meaningful impact on the encyclopedia! Otherwise my time is better spent writing articles about Taiwanese aborigines. :-)

Later --Ling.Nut 20:31, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Why not just merge the GA with the Peer review, then? It would really save a lot of time, effort, and bureaucracy. This is just my opinion, but if you took a featured article, kept all of the article text the same, and removed the citations only, it still should be able to clearly to be seen and judged as a Good Article. If the whole point is not to adhere to full FA requirements, let's not quantify things like this. I expect a GA as a whole to adhere to about 75-80% of all the FA requirements, not 75-80% of each FA requirement.
But to remain Cato the Elder, GA review is vastly inefficient when you can just integrate GA approval with the general Assessment classification scheme. Why bother having a separate space when you can much more easily allow editors to simply class the articles as such? Then you'd only need the GA tag for articles without any assessment templates. Much easier. Girolamo Savonarola 20:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm taking all these pages off my watch list, for two weeks or so.
However, please do let me know if any particular group people starts trying to MfD the project. I don't understand the ideas of people who want to stop other people from helping the encyclopedia.. but.. whatever.
Best wishes 'til then
--Ling.Nut 21:21, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
That's not what I'm stating at all. I'd rather these issues be directly discussed here instead of everyone always walking away when they're brought up. If you really think that what I'm saying is totally wrong, please tell me so and explain why. Otherwise, let's discuss the merits of my argument. Thank you, Girolamo Savonarola 21:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I think we need a project wide conversation about the criteria, since many people think that its getting way too close to FA, I for one have some ideas to lower them without really comprimising anything :/. There's a whole bunch of reviewers behind the scenes so to speak keeping this project going now I notice. Homestarmy 21:41, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
This isn't the world's most urgent debate. Wikipedia will not crash if this isn't sorted immediately. I've detailed my own thoughts above, so everyone knows what I think. I'm not sure merging with peer review is so wonderful - GA can be an end in itself, and for shorter stuff quite frequently is. Best to all, Moreschi 21:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

I came back 'cause I forgot something, and I'm glad I did :-)
Hi Girolamo, please don't think I'm walking out on you. I swear on... whatever a person would swear on.. that I have been whining and complaining for weeks that I have to finish my papers for this semester. I must drop out of this conversation! It has nothing to do with yu, or witht the topic being discussed. Ex-Boyscouts-Honor.
Here's what I came back to say:
  • GA must be fulfilling a need w/in the encyclopedia, else why would there be people lining up to request it? (I say this humbly, not arrogantly. I am a newcomer to GA).
  • I would also submit as evidence the positive impact we've had. Maybe... Whites in Zimbabwe, though more exp. folks can bring up more examples. User:Indon, whom I may have been too harsh with, had really good input into that article. I humbly hope I have made some contribution as well. I know others who have been here longer can point to better examples.
Cheers --Ling.Nut 21:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe Moreschi's point was not that writing should not be a prerequisite, but that the writing standards were being unfairly applied. That said, I *do* think that readability is impoortant for GA, and that it should be looked at as a mediator-led process in many cases. Have a look at the good it did for topics like Whale shark in the period up to the GA, and several others. I'd like to think my GA reviewing helped it a lot. Indeed, Agrippina (opera), the source of the dispute, still improved a lot. The objection was, I think, more to the tone of the GA reviewer.

Yes, there's going to be problems, there will be objections, but we must keep up GA as a force of good for the encyclopedia. To that end, I prefer On Hold (an optimistic procedure that encourages work in the week it's on hold) to immediate failure in most cases. Indeed, that might be a good rule: Give it time to improvve and take in the recommendations. Adam Cuerden talk 15:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portals

I know lists cannot qualify as GAs, and I would (very safely) assume that portals, which are even further away from the concept of an "article" than a list, is also off-limits. I ask simply because someone put a portal- or, rather a sub-portal, on GAC, which I don't think I've ever seen before (possibly because nobody's ever done it). -- Kicking222 23:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Question answered by criteria change. Lincher 00:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
this change. Cbrown1023 00:27, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Small topics, such as villages

Right, I was wondering where the guidelines stand in relation to articles on rather uninteresting topics. For instance, as, according to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Precedents 'Cities and villages are notable, regardless of size'. So, say I worked heavily on an article about a village (Which I have, and though isn't now, it is the article that I can most likely meet 'Good Article' criteria) of no particular relevence in the grand scheme of things, could this become a good article just as easily as an article about a city? In fact, would it not be easier to get this to Good Article status, as there is so little that is to be said? Any help on the matter would be appreciated, I would be fair proud if I got a Good Article under my belt. J Milburn 19:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be far easier, since you wouldn't need as much content to be broad enough. The problem with many city articles i've seen is that their just so increadibly long, and due to the topic, they have to be :/. But a village probably wouldn't require, say, a step by step list of all notable landmarks and discussion of the cities history going back to the 1600's :D. (Unless its a really old village that's stayed perpetually small, but even then, that probably isn't too much history.) Homestarmy 19:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines

Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines now has an elevated status as a guideline for WikiProjects Mathematics and Physics. So the question we are all eagerly awaiting is does this affect the GA criteria? --Salix alba (talk) 13:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It does if we say it does, which I propose we do :). It seems like a fair guideline in many respects to use for examining mathematical and scientific articles. I recommend we change the internal citations guideline to mention the guideline in reference to Mathematical and Scientific articles. Homestarmy 13:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Regarding general knowledge such as "Special relativity combines Galilean relativity with the postulate that all observers will always measure the speed of light to be the same no matter what their state of uniform linear motion is.": I must repeat myself. I want an official okeydoke from trusted members of the relevant WikiProject. I wanna know who those trusted members are. If I have that, then the cites get a PASS, though other elements may not. :-)
--Ling.Nut 01:04, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I think you didn't read far enough into the guidelines. The scientific citation guideline says that undisputed facts should have an inline citation:
The verifiability criteria require that such statements be sourced so that in principle anyone can verify them. ... Therefore, in sections or articles that present well-known and uncontroversial information ... it is acceptable to give an inline citation for one or two authoritative sources at the start (and possibly a more accessible source, if one is available) in such a way as to indicate that these sources can be checked to verify later statements for which no in-line citation is provided.
If the guidelines do apply to the space weathering article, then it needs a little work before it can be passed. In addition to a lack of an inline citation to a general reference at the start, the article describes several experiments (at least Galileo and Shoemaker) without giving sources for them. I could give a more thorough reading of the article if it would be helpful. CMummert 14:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Do these guidelines apply to Space weathering? --Ling.Nut 03:33, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
As far as I'm concerned, my okeydoke is happily stamped on the guidelines themselves. Notices on specific articles should be listed at Wikipedia Talk: WikiProject Physics and a member will get back to you fairly promptly. --ScienceApologist 13:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

(undent) A straightforward and helpful reply! Thank you.

I have a question. Are you saying that any science article can be posted on Wikipedia Talk: WikiProject Physics? What about math articles? What about Space weathering?

I know that some contributors are vehemently against WP:GA delisting scientific articles for lack of inline citations. That's all well and good. But any crackpot could write any kinda shtuff about Flux capacitors, and who's to know? In short, what can be the process for dealing with all science-related articles? --Ling.Nut 14:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is one, yet. At present, only physics and mathematics have signed onto the science citation guidelines, although Molecular Biology seems to be discussing them as well. Other projects may or may not know about them. It's an unfortunate consequence of Balkanization that there is no uniform policy. Maybe there never can be - what is a "scientific" article, anyway?
My opinion is that if an article is edited until it meets the spirit of the science citation guidelines then it will be in good shape to pass review, and that the space weathering article isn't there quite yet. A second opinion is that everyone should read the science citation guidelines, in good faith, as encouraging inline citation; they list many places where inline cites should be provided. CMummert 14:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
At the very least, can we change the guideline now to refer to this guideline in reference to mathematics and physics articles? It looks amaturish in my opinion that there's a disputed notice in our criteria for so long. Homestarmy 18:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Of course — if the math & physics folks have adopted Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines, then we should explicitly state that & follow it. I still have two probs though:
  1. What about all the other sciences?
  2. What about crackpots? A partial answer to thois one is to drop the article off at the doorstep of the relevant WikiProject, but... that seems pretty ad hoc to me... --Ling.Nut 19:26, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Considering most of the dispute over the criteria came from Physics and Mathematics editors, I assume they aren't currently protesting just normal kinds of inline citations. "Crackpots" are simple enough to deal with when you have high quality referencing in my opinion. Homestarmy 20:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

(undent) Huh? That doesn't make sense. You're saying "high quality referencing" is our wolfsbane against crackpots; the science folks are saying "we don't want no stinking referencing." Something's gotta give somewhere.--Ling.Nut 20:33, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

This citation guideline mandates referencing, far higher than many articles dealing with science have been in my opinion, yet signifigantly less referencing that other classes do. If more science folks try to go "we don't want no stinking referencing", they won't be following this guideline, and their articles should be failed post haste. Homestarmy 20:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
OK we'll give it a "try try see" (that expression only makes sense if you speak Chinese), at least for Math and Physics.
But for non-math, non-physics science articles with few or no cites, should we just delist, or instead drop it off at WP:GA/R? Enquiring minds wanna know. --Ling.Nut 20:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
For ease of usage, I would prefer if we WP:IAR and say that any articles concerning scientific topics should at least adhere to this citation guideline, whether or not the relavent Wikiprojects have explictily accepted it or not. When articles which have an ambiguous status as solely scientific pop up, we can take those on a case by case basis, such as controversy articles. I mean, even though we use the FA rules as precendent for these guidelines, for the most part, we're determining how stringent they are all by ourselves :/. Homestarmy 01:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] An MoS Discussion

I'd like to make a proposel about compliance with the MoS, which the current criteria says is more or less mandatory. The thing is, I think many of the things in the Manual of Style, when their followed, simply make articles look final and polished, rather than necessarily just "good". Since many people seem to feel that having the criteria so similiar to FA standards is problematic, I think this will be an easy way to both make the criteria not be so similiar, and make articles which are actually Good be allowed to stay on the list, even when their contradicting something in the MoS which might not be very important. Furthermore, the MoS is quite large, and I don't think most people even know everything that's in there, I know I'm certainly not familiar with it all. I think what we should do is re-write the MoS compliance part to name just a few parts of the Manual of Style that Good Articles should rightly satisfy, so that it doesn't look like there's some demand that, for instance, text needs to be nearly perfectly formatted or exceptionally Captionalized.

In particular, I think that the vast majority of MoS related disputes i've seen concerning GA's involves only a few key parts of the MoS. In particular, I think WP:LEAD, WP:LAYOUT, WP:MOSDEF with jargon, WP:WTA which is like WP:WEASEL, and especially WP:WAF with fiction pretty much sums up the important stuff that comes up concerning Good Articles status. The special articles guidelines seem to be disputed, inactive, or developing, so I don't think we should be expected to grade articles by them. All of the supplementary manuals are just technical type stuff or how to format English correctly, and I don't think i've ever seen articles which comply with the GA criteria in every way except by having bad capitalization, improper dash use, or improper marking of trademarks. Command line use might be important at WP:MOSCOMM because programming articles would look a bit, well, un-good with improper use of it, but all in all, I don't think most manuals in this category on their own should really be helpful in deciding whether an article is "good" or not. Besides the fiction guideline, (Which is definently important in my opinion) in the other guidance section, most of those things are either redundent with other criteria anyway, or are fairly obscure, and things which I really don't think should impact whether or not an article is good. I propose that GA criteria 1(c) therefore be altered to read: "It follows the following elements of the Wikipedia Manual of style: Article lead guidelines, Article layout guidelines, Jargon guidelines, Words to avoid using, How to write about Fiction, and How to incorporate lists." Any thoughts? Because these seem to be the only major guidelines that really concern how "well-written" an article is that aren't redundent with something else in the GA criteria. Homestarmy 02:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Any thoughts at all? Homestarmy 03:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Should be uncontroversial. / Fred-Chess 17:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

To make it necessary to comply with a GUIDELINE has led to more b'cracy and formalities that it has been useful. Articles don't HAVE to comply with the Lead Section guideline. They aren't forced to comply with anything of the MoS. That's why the MoS is a guideline, and not a policy! That is why the MoS starts with saying

Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.

So that when our reviewers look through an article and decide that "sorry, the lead section must have one more sentence per WP:LEAD", it is hurting more than helping.

Therefore I have rewritten the criteria to say that as long as an article does not seriously violate any part of the MoS it should be OK (provided that it is otherwise comprehensible).

I am happy if you want to "fix up" my edit in case I have used the wrong words, but I hope you will agree with what I am trying to say.

Fred-Chess 10:07, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, no article has ever had to comply with the lead guideline, they simply have to comply with it if it's going to be a GA, unless we run into some IAR thing. It was worse before technically, complying with the whole MoS? That's a bit severe. Homestarmy 17:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changes to the guideline

The "logical deducation" part draws flashbacks to OR advocates tossing that term around to try and defend the inclusion of their OR synthesis in the article. Is there a better way to phrase that? There is also a gap between what is Common "Joe Bloe" knowledge and Common "specialized" knowledge that is not made clear at all. A key point is that these articles are meant for the average reader who may not hold a Master's Degree in any given field that an article relates to. I've tried to cover the third issue about good faith requests for sources (especially for things that dance into that Common specialized knowledge area). Feel free to rewrite but try to keep the spirit intact because we certainly don't want to be hostile to good faith request for sources on things that may not be "common knowledge" to the reader. Agne 20:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I was concerned about it too when I saw that, since what is a logical deduction to some might be entirely illogical to others :/. I changed the common knowladge thing though, because many people in highly specialized articles insisted that if something is common knowladge to the .0001 percent of the general population who are scientists in a certain field, that it doesn't require references. I'm getting concerned though that this criterion is getting altogether too long :/. Homestarmy 20:13, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
On the other hand, 51% of the billions of readers of English seems a little broad. I copied the language of the Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines, since what is acceptable there should be acceptable elsewhere. The examples of common knowledge there may need to explained further, as I take Agne to say; but it should be sufficient to supply a good general reference to verify them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

LOL...how about creating a subpage for WP:WIAGA/criteria 2b with all the legal disclaimers? :p Agne 20:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll get out the instruction creep forklifts to handle the move! :D Homestarmy 20:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict)
A subpage is not enough. We'll all need to "lawyer up" and hire some legal eagles. Plus we need flameproof underwear. I know I have mine on. :-P
But seriously, I know GA folks are against instruction creep, but I have always seen additional instructions as additional insulation against flames. I have remarked on that several time. I hereby officially go on record with that remark. --Ling.Nut 20:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) I do think an area of common ground is setting the bar at passing WP:V and WP:NOR and if a reviewer or another editor makes a good faith request for specific things to be cited then it should be. If a reviewer thinks the article fails Criteria 2 for whatever reason, it shouldn't be unreasonable for them to place cite requested tags on the things that cause them to fail. That way the editors aren't left in the dark or thinking there is some magical number of cites they need to have. It's always about the content not the count. Agne 20:35, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Since we're still editing it right now sort of, I assume once nobody else wants to change anything, we can just shorten the wording, then it might not look so oddly long. Homestarmy 20:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Maybe it's just me, but the "challenged or likely to be challenged" bit and the "good faith request for a source" bit seem... I dunno. A little mismatched or... something. I need to think about it for a while. But speaking frankly, even tho they seem not to fit together, I like having both of them there. It kinda covers all the bases, IMO. --Ling.Nut 20:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

It is too long and I think trying to find acceptable wording for "common knowledge" or what are "logical deductions" is an impossible task. Why not just note the new guidelines? For example:

That really is already long enough and I see no contradictions nor any need for more text. --RelHistBuff 23:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Now that we're basically edit warring over the common knowladge part, i've put up a disclaimer so people know that the criteria is currently being re-written. Pmanderson, you do realize, if you read down the Citation guideline for scientific articles, it specifically mentions that to get around having to cite line by line material which is recognized almost universally in scienctific topics, citations are necessary, just only at the beginning of each section? This is quite contradictory wording. Homestarmy 01:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, and I think we should follow that practice - with the obvious qualifier that if the same general references apply in all sections, there is no profit in repeating them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
But with it saying "This does not apply to logical deductions or material that may be considered common knowledge among people familiar with a discipline", there's no qualification, it simply says referencing doesn't apply at all, which doesn't mention how the guideline says they do apply, just in a very different way than normal. Homestarmy 01:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. We are talking about two different things: and for Joe Blow common knowledge "known to billions" is less unreasonable. Let me try another draft - and I think I can narrow down the business about logical deduction too. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

What does "simple arithmetic" refer to? Does it mean that complex arithmetic needs a source? / Fred-Chess 10:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The four functions, as opposed to statistics, or political arithmetic. But if we're going to leave out the examples, this is moot. If we do have examples, how about "straightforward arithmetic"? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It is not a good idea to have unstable criteria and as we are already discussing it here, I have put 2b back to the original version with a reference to this talk page. The last suggested version by Pmanderson is below:

  • (b) it should make clear where support for any claim can be found; and cite its sources using an accepted form of inline citation for such information "which is either challenged or likely to be challenged"(WP:V). Statements which offer no element of novelty, such as simple arithmetic or things known to most readers, need not be sourced. General references, for a section or for several sections, will source material that would be considered common knowledge among people familiar with a discipline. Citations for Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry should adhere to the Scientific citation guidelines. If another editor or GA reviewer makes a good faith request for a source, it is expected that the request be answered in some fashion.

I suggest getting consensus here first. --RelHistBuff 11:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think its great that all the explanation has to be in this criteria, when its all in the Scientific citation guideline, I mean, that's where it basically says "General references, for a section or for several sections, will source material that would be considered common knowledge among people familiar with a discipline.", so why do we need to repeat it? All this length makes it look sort of odd in my opinion. I think the arithmatic example fits under the sentence before it too, I mean, who's going to challenge 1+1=2? I'm also not sure about the last line because it seems like that mostly only happens on the Review page, so it seems like rather than being part of some criteria, its serving as instructions. Homestarmy 16:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Because the same observation, for the same reasons, applies to all articles. There are five general references in the Bach article. All of them have Bach's birthdate; all of them have B-A-C-H, and as long as the reader knows to go to them when no more specific reference is given, they verify most of the article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
If I understand it correctly, you are saying that the last and the third to last sentences could be removed. I would agree with that.
Can we also agree that articles on Math, Physics and Chemistry only need to adhere to Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines? If we say that, and we also say that apart from that only such statements that introduce novel ideas needs inline referencing, then it shouldn't be necessary to note that the criteria is disputed.
Fred-Chess 18:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
That's generally what i'm after, namely that Math, Physics, and Chemistry articles need to comply with at least the Scientific citation guidelines, though the "at least" isn't necessary. I can forsee problems though where articles which aren't primarily about the science involved, such as articles over this and that controversy, but I think we can just take those on a case by case basis. However, i'm not entirely certain what the definition of "novel" is in this case..... Homestarmy 21:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Fine by me; another solution would be to move the sentences elsewhere, and introduce a "see also below", if someone feels they need to be said. The case for examples of non-novelty would be to answer the cranks who will insist that their original research isn't novel, it's true - anbd so to provide an extensive definition. I could go either way. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Anything wrong with the proposal above, namely:

?? linas 22:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

If it omitted the word "in-line", there would be nothing wrong with it; but WP:CITE does not, and should not, demand in-line citation. There was nothing wrong with the actual original form, changed by a small group of editors against continual protest:
the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is desirable, although not mandatory.
Mathematical and scientific articles are not the only ones in which broad stretches of an article are derived from general references which it would be repetitious and pointless to cite repeatedly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:11, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Linas's suggestion doesn't say that inline citations are mandated by WP:CITE, only that the Good Article criteria will mandate it. If other classes of articles prove that they require citation guidelines similar to the Scientific citations one, they can always make their own guideline, or better yet, change the Scientific citations guideline to encompass their subject as well. Homestarmy 22:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I believe we have already demonstrated the opinion of WikiProject Music. Making this mandatory has no support outside a narrow clique, and will render WP:GA useless to the encyclopedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
If the problems we've seen over Agrippina and Bach here are indeed representative of the vast majority of editors to music articles, then we should discuss that issue separatly like we did for Science article editors, but for now, we have agreement that the Scientific citation guideline at least should be included in the criteria right now, and we don't have agreement that the criteria should no longer require inline citations. Homestarmy 22:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, I observe Robert West's remarks above for Biography and History. You have Wikipedia:Good_articles/Review#Bourbonnais_train_accident for Rairoad culture. Is there any field that endorses this idea? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it matters if they endorse it or not, since we're the ones actually reviewing the articles, it would seem to me that the decision is primarily ours as to whether or not inline citations are necessary in a standard format for certain article styles. There's a certain amount of bias that creeps in when there's a group of people all editing certain articles and wanting to call them good, yet since the GA system isn't supposed to constrain itself to certain articles and we don't have a specific mandate to actually edit heavily every single GA we get, there isn't so much of a bias towards certain topics. Homestarmy 23:11, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I see: It doesn't matter what the substantive editors think, just we, the sidewalk superintendents, with our private club. This is the attitude that has produced the problems with Mathematics, with Music, and will produce the same problems as long as it is persisted in. GAR doesn't have a mandate to do anything; the assumption it does is the basic difficulty here: we are just a bunch of editors. I had thought better of many of you, including Homestarmy. I hope this is a moment of aberration; if not, I must conclude that Eusebeus was right. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:41, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
....I know there's some guideline or essay about Systematic bias concerning people who actually write the article, there's something about how the people involved in writing an article will naturally be more defensive about it, but I can't seem to find it :/. If I knew where it was, i'd point you to it, that was what my argument was based on. Homestarmy 02:09, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Of course there is; I'm not talking about support by aggrieved authors of articles. The scientists rejected your standards as a group, including (I believe) several who have never had an article on GA, much less reviewed. Eusebeus and I are not the authors of Johann Sebastian Bach. I do not know of any article by Robert West which has been on GA - and he certainly didn't cite any. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, "inline", of course. I do believe that PMAnderson clearly states the opinion of the vast majority. Inline cites are great when a single sentence makes a single, citeable claim. I've started using them myself. But as the science-article guidelines make clear, inline cites are insane absurdities in most cases. The WP:Music stance should be no surprise, and I can't imagine any editors in any academic discipline, be it history, social studies, anthropology, linguistics, supporting inane inlining.

I'm guessing that inline cites mostly come in handy as a tool for edit-warring controversial articles, where every factoid, true or false, is questioned, argued. But I believe that edit-warring is the exception, not the norm, and demanding inline cites just because the propagandists love them is inappropriate in general. Does this correctly capture the majority opinion? linas 04:06, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, I don't think anybody is opposed to the Scientific citations guideline, quite the contrary, we started this discussion primarily to insert it into the inline citation criterion. However, then people started trying to re-write it way beyond what the point was, and here we are. Homestarmy 05:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Could we get a statement from the WikiProject on Music calling inline referencing for articles such as J.S. Bach "inane"?
Fred-Chess 10:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
These also deal with the GA nomination process, which is flawed in the opposite direction - any two fanboys can make and confirm a nomination. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


I for one would hope not. Musicology is pretty subjective stuff and quite often inline cites are needed. Unlike science, where E=mc² is objective, like much else scientific. Moreschi Deletion! 16:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
And when they are needed, they should be given. They should be given in physics articles too. We are discussing sourcing consensus statements, like:
  • Bach used the motto B-A-C-H.
  • Bach was an extraordinary composer.
  • Bach's family had an extraordinary number of musicians
  • Counterpoint was basic to his style.
Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
No. A statement like "Bach was an extraordinary composer" is POV and requires a cite. There are plenty who disagree. Moreschi Deletion! 16:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
No no no Moreschi, and you normally such a good editor. Only someone with blinding literal-mindedness could object to that statement. Read his entry in the Brit or Groves. I am starting genuinely to believe that slavish devotion to the principles of GA actually result in ominous Newthink. Eusebeus 13:25, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
We are discussing the case in which it is in all the general references for the section - as I believe it is; when a dissentient is found, then it can be cited. Although, now that I check, the actual statement at issue was the one about Bach's family, which is also consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Actually, in that Bach was an extraordinary composer case, an inline cite wouldn't be needed. That's because that sentence shouldn't exist in an encyclopedia which claims to be written from a neutral POV. Citing something isn't enough, if the thing being cited is a clearly non-neutral assertion, it should either be re-written to be neutral or be deleted. Homestarmy 18:04, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deplorable edit

This edit is deplorable; I trust it will not recur. If we are going to have an interim form until consensus, it should either be the day before yesterday's text before Fred Chess's compromise, or the last undisputed form, from August. (It should also not make an incomplete and inaccurate account of the extent of the dispute.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, the criteria was changing so rapidly, anyone trying to actually use it in a review would of had quite a tough time of doing it, especially for people who do a very detailed review, they could of started when the criteria said one thing and finished shortly after it changed. Homestarmy 22:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I have no objection to a stable text, although a disputed criterion should be appealled to gingerly, and someplace to edit the text now under discussion would be nice. However, a text which is not consensus - and was severely altered since - is unacceptable; so is misstatement of the extent and nature of this dispute. And this edit summary: "although not mandatory" was never in criterion 2b, is a falsehood, as the last stable version will show; there are only tweaks between then and 14 September. Indeed, it was the original wording of WP:WIAGA, and there has never been consensus to change that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Agreement?

No one has objected to the following:

*(b) it should make clear where support for any claim can be found; and cite its sources using an accepted form of inline citation for such information "which is either challenged or likely to be challenged"(WP:V). Statements which offer no element of novelty need not be sourced. Citations for Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry should adhere to the Scientific citation guidelines.

The examples listed for no element of novelty were:

straightforward arithmetic or things known to most readers

We can put this back in if editors start claiming their revelations from Atlantis contain no element of novelty.

The following is sensible, although it would be well to make it non-prescriptive, as here. But it applies to most of the criteria, and should be a separate sentence away from the individual criteria.

If another editor or GA reviewer makes a good faith request for a source, it is expected that the request be answered in some fashion.

That leaves:

General references, for a section or for several sections, will source material that would be considered common knowledge among people familiar with a discipline.

This is compatible with every guideline and policy; it is expressly demanded by Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines. Under it any reader will know where to check any statement; if it's not specifically sourced in-line, go to the general reference for the section. Many scholarly books use it. What is the substantive problem here? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:52, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I still don't like that novelty word because it just seems so ambiguous, (even though its in the policy) but the first part should of been about what should be inserted in the first place. Homestarmy 05:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I am far more interested in the thought than in the language; the examples were intended to disambiguate it. This is a draft; please emend. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
If the second sentence is removed, then it would be fine. --RelHistBuff 10:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
The substantial problem is, to answer Pmanderson, that Wikipedia is not a scholarly book, and it is simple for mistakes to enter articles. Suppose an article has a well-written section based entire on a standard work of literature. Then someone else comes along, add adds a paragraph that sounds believable, but we can't confirm his sources.
I therefore think that a paragraph-based reference system is better than a section-based. I can't see a big hazzle in adding an inline reference at the bottom of every paragraph, that's what I do myself. / Fred-Chess 16:29, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you; always pleasant to deal with a real answer. What Fred says is quite true, errors do drift in - but inline citation doesn't prevent them. Consider this edit, which almost reverses the meaning of the sentence - without changing the footnote. Since it was my note (and still on my Recentchanges), I doubted it, went back and double-checked, and responded; but another reader would come away with the conviction that we had a sourced statement from a source which says no such thing.
Such edits happen all the time; often in good faith, as this one was. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Controversial topics, etc.

I apologize for not contributing to this discussion, and indeed not even following it closely. Real life has intervened in 2 or 3 different ways.

I've skimmed bits and pieces. If my remarks are redundant, I apologize in advance. But I wonder if the nature of the topic that has been the center of the discussion ("Bach") kinda skews the outcome. I'm sure there are a few controversies about Bach and his work. I assume that based largely on human nature. ;-) But there's no way that Bach is the minefield that many other topics can be.

I have no problem at all asking for inline cites on every line, and even two or three per line, on extrememly controversial topics (TYPICALLY political figures such as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk or regions embroiled in controversy such as Lebanon).

Here's a list I put on Talk:Mustafa Kemal Atatürk:

  • Direct quotes: "Culture is the foundation of the Turkish Republic".
  • Acts of government: "Recent moves by the Turkish government have provided Kurds with greater rights and freedoms, particularly in areas such as the Kurdish language, education, and media."
  • Numbers, figures, dates, etc.: "...succeeded in achieving a substantial increase of the public literacy rate from 20% to over 90%."
  • Broad, strong generalizations: "...reforms to which much of the population was unaccustomed but nevertheless willing to adopt."
  • Specific Historical events:"...he was appointed the commander of Derne on March 6, 1912."

I finally apologize in advance for not being able to participate much in the near future. I just wanted to throw these thoughts out for people to deal with as they wish.

Thanks --Ling.Nut 18:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Note: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has two general references; both biographies written by Anglophones, with the last three years. They look like eminently reliable souirces.
  • Quotes: should be sourced; especially if, as may be here, the quotation is apocryphal.
  • Acts of government: The example given is presumably not in Ataturk's biographies, and is therefore unsourced; it is also so vague as to be difficult to verify. If it said, for example, "The Law of National Reconcilation of 1983 provides that...", that would constitute a reference.
  • Numbers, figures, and dates: In-line citation does not protect these from tampering; it does give them a spurious air of authenticity when they are tampered with. I think most dates go rather with significant historical events than with statistics, where specific citation may make tampering easier to detect - or may not; if the reference is to a statistical digest in Turkish, it will be hard to verify even if given.
  • Broad, strong generalizations. The example given probably is consensus for the two biographies; it's not an uncommon view.
  • Specific historic events: Example given is almost certainly consensus for the biographies. Would adding a footnote saying "Mango, Kinross" improve the article any?

Regards. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:25, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice try. Footnotes aren't silver bullets that prevent spurious info added by vandals (usually with an agenda; sometimes pranksters). They are not intended to do so. Saying that they do no prevent vandalism is setting up a straw man argument. Vandalism is gonna occur anyway. Footnotes help Good Faith editors quickly and easily track down the exact spot where the correct info can be found, in case something is challenged. Please feel free to read WP:V and also:
--Ling.Nut 23:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The rule I propose is: if there is no footnote, consult any of the general references to the section. This will apply only to common knowledge in the field; and it will be easier to verify than consulting a specific page of a specific edition of a specific book.
    • WP:V says nothing about in-line citation at all; I believe it was proposed and defeated. Please do not drag around these red herrings. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:03, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

WP:V says "Editors should provide a reliable source for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or it may be removed." Sure, consult any of the references. Mmm. That might work for Bach — you know, that really, really long article that somehow or other manages to have only half a dozen or so sources (one of which is uh Rasmussen which has its full reference.. uh.. wait.. it must be here somewhere....uhhh...). Well anyhow it might work for the six or so references in Bach. What about Irish phonology? What about Paul McCartney? What about... ummm... maybe half the high-quality articles on Wikipedia, which have something more than the mysterious "Rasmussen" plus five or so others? --Ling.Nut 04:14, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

"Rasmussen" is a real problem - but it's a problem with an inline citation for a digression. Insisting on inline citations will probably produce more such.
Bach is different than many subjects, because he is written up so often; when you put together the material that is consensus between five or six current sources you have an article. (It lists more than a dozen references; the five are the "modern works" which cover the whole subject.) The problem with Irish phonology, and it is a problem, is that it does not cite a good secondary reference work on the subject, which includes the dialects, more recent that O Rahilly's 1932 book; I presume no such work exists. If it did, the Wikipedia article should not be citing the research papers, leaving the reader to guess which papers are actually widely accepted in the field, and which are some loon in a bog doing guesswork. I trust the editors have made a good selection, but I cannot verify that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Ha ha :-) Actually I agree with you about Bach. He's dust in the ground, and both he and his work have been mined, examined & analyzed to the point exhaustion. It may even be true that a small handful of references is enough to write at length without copyvio problems.
As for Irish phonology, you can go to User talk:Angr if you like and ask him about it. I'm not gonna drop him a note to invite him into this discussion. There's no reason to stir up even more bad feelings with more people.
And "Rasmussen" is a tuh-may-toh or tuh-mah-toh problem. You say it's because of those evil inline cites. I say... it is something that should be fixed. :-)
--Ling.Nut 01:58, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Two points on 2b

First of all, I think it is an inherent problem to write in a guideline that one of its criterias is disputed. I can think of several reasons why it is so bad, so I'll leave it to your imaginations to come up with your own. Instead we must strive for our glorious guiding star Wikipedia:Consensus.

Secondly: would it be OK to have as a guideline that every paragraph should utlize an inline citation? See Johannes Kepler for an example of an article that has done this (with some omissions).

Fred-Chess 02:26, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

This is only part of the problem; the whole problem is having a criterion which is disputed. As for Kepler; the section on his childhood is drawn from one source. Having a footnote which says so is sufficient; more would merely hide the difficulty with the article: that the editors only used one biography in the first place; I trust this will be fixed before it reaches FA. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:16, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
We should use established standards regarding inline references. The standard is not to put them at the end of a section; it is to put them at the end of a sentence or paragraph (Wikipedia:Inline citation, first sentence). / Fred-Chess 13:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you; that's an essay, not an established standard. This is just as well; in its present form, it is a POV fork of WP:CITE, written by editors who do not understand the meaning or purpose of citation. I note, however, the following quite sensible advice from it: The best advice is on the FAC page: an article should be tightly written and comprehensive. If one inline citation is all it takes to make it tightly written that's ok; if you need 100 inline citations that's ok too. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
The standard is not specific to Wikipedia. It is unusual to let inline references refer to a whole section, as is done on Johannes Kepler, and therefore it is non-intuitive to most users.
Fred-Chess 22:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Erg....

When I proposed the change to the MoS guideline, I forgot all about WP:SELF, I don't think it was listed in the main MoS template :(. I want to bring it up here because I think there's now a conflict of interest with the Platform game article up for a review right now, and while I personally think self-references just plain don't look good at all, I don't know if it could be justified that it counts as bad writing :/. So what does anyone think about adding WP:SELF to the MoS list there? Homestarmy 02:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see it; WP:SELF involves unnecessary references to Wikipedia. Do you mean the self-published sources exception in verifiability? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
An example from the article in question would be "Like so many of the gaming firsts mentioned in this article,...". Homestarmy 21:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think WP:SELF is intended to cover that. It has two rationales: references to Wikipedia can't be mirrored, and aren't encyclopedic. The first is no problem: the mirrored article will make perfect sense. I would rephrase that example, but I don't think the self reference is the problem with the tone. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it does in a nutshell, "...never allow the text of an article to assume that the reader is viewing it at Wikipedia, and try to avoid even assuming that the reader is viewing the article at a website." and it just looks un-good to me. The NPOV ness of some of the sentences in the article I think might be debated the other way, and the problem is, I was all set to continue to support my vote for delisting the article, until I realized WP:SELF is no longer part of the guidelines because it doesn't include the entire MoS anymore. Dunno why it wasn't in the MoS template, or if it was, how I missed it... Homestarmy 22:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
You see some implication I don't; why couldn't that sentence stand in print? The referent is "this article". But delist on the grounds of bad writing and quote that in illustration; why not be clear? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Exactly, by referencing the article itself, it assumes the reader is viewing the article at a website, in this case, this one. The problem is i'm not sure if self-references are necessarily bad writing, just non-encyclopedic writing where Wikipedia is concerned :/ .Homestarmy 22:29, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I find the sentence "The measure of allocative inefficiency used in this article is slightly different from the procedure used by Schmidt and Lovell" from an article printed in 1991 (bold added); how does this differ? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, if it was printed in 1991, I presume it's not on Wikipedia, I don't think WP:SELF would apply :). Homestarmy 22:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] When inline citations are necessary

I've added that inline citations are necessary for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. To be frank, I find this particular formulation diffuse, and would prefer to write it differently. But it comes straight from a Wikipedia guideline.

Can we at least agree that referencing of "material challenged or likely to be challenged" (Wikipedia:References#When_you_add_content) must be done through some sort of inline referencing? Is there anyone who thinks it can be done in some other way?

Fred-Chess 23:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

See Regular number. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Point taken, but I find it to be a theoretical question since I don't know of any GA as short as regular number. How can it be useful to take such theoretical issues into account? It should stand without reason that an article of stub-length doesn't need inline references.
I furthermore question the usefulness of the ambiguous statement "inline citations are highly desirable for longer articles in particular, although not mandatory". Does it mean that GA need them or not? Judging by the phrasing, apparently not.
I thought we had started to get somewhere on this -- I thought you considered Johannes Kepler a model article [8]? I thought you agreed that inline citations would be useful if put at the end of a section (and I tried to inform you that it is standard to put them at the end of paragraphs and not sections; see above). Are you now changing your mind or did I misunderstand you?
Fred-Chess 00:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
What is necessary is clear citation. Homotopy groups of spheres also manages to be unambiguously sourced; do I recall correctly that Fred agreed on this? It isn't stub length; but almost all of it (and the handful of exceptions are clearly indicated) is drawn from two sources, neither of them much longer than the article. We could add a footnote citing both of them to every paragraph; but the result would look silly, and be a waste of time, the one resource on which we are short. If an article is not in-line cited, make the case that points subject to dispute are not clearly sourced - and if they are unclear, I will agree with you.
Nor is inline citation a guarantee of clarity, btw. Consider my last edit to Ivy League. The page in question supports the text I added, and does not source the rest of the paragraph. I think the parenthetical "Scandals:" indicates this; without it, the citation would be ambiguous. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:59, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus?

Personally, I very much like the current version. It strikes me as eminently reasonable, a good compromise, and common sense, seeing as that's what I pretty much do anyway. Is there anyone who doesn't? Cheers, Moreschi Deletion! 12:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It's OK for me, I guess...
Fred-Chess 12:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I have made the case for it above. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:07, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
It's a change, but I never really cared all that much for it being mandatory anyway :/. Homestarmy 19:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a step backwards and will keep the GA tag in the low esteem it has carried because articles that are truly not good articles or are not anywhere close to FA status will still continue to receive and maintain the GA tag.Agne 20:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I have not seen that inline citations are mandatory for FAs. FAs requires unambiguous referencing, and that anything that is challanged or is likely to be challenged is (inline) referenced. That is in line with Wikipedia:Verifiability.
I agree that it is a step back, but there appears to be little to do about it. Having a criteria tagged as "disputed" must be wrong. Furthermore, I think that an article can be "good" even if it is not filled with inline references, as long as its material is uncontroversial, and one can conclude that it can be found in any general book on the subject.
Fred-Chess 20:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Another project has signed up at WP:SCG (scientific citation guidelines); updating the list will be a continuing problem if you list the projects here. By the way, the new footnote that says
Articles or sections that contains general statements, mathematical equations, logical deductives, "common knowledge", or other material that does not contain disputable statements needn't be referenced.
is weaker than WP:SCG#Uncontroversial knowledge, which suggests that each section should have an inline citation near the beginning to a general reference for the material in that section. CMummert 16:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think the footnote adds much: Wikipedia:inline citation is an essay, not a consensus.
I also find myself using "clear citations" instead of "unambiguous citations" in explaining the present text; it might be just as well to change that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:20, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't object to calling them "clear citations", if the community thinks it is a better term. When it comes to the essay, I find it informative, and a good help to any editor; it is referred to as an essay in the footnote. / Fred-Chess 00:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Well, that was pointless

An anon changed the MoS guideline to " It follows certain elements of the Wikipedia Manual of style, namely the Article lead guideline, Article layout guideline, Jargon guideline, Words to avoid using guideline, List incorporation, as well as the relative article specific guidelines as found on the {{style}} template.", adding the last part with the style template, which in effect makes the change I made compleatly pointless, and makes it so articles must adhere to basically the entire MoS again. The anon seemed to be User:Tarret but he/she never responds on his/her user talk page, so I have no idea who this person is, though they seem to mirror Tarret's editing style. Can I get a consensus about the changes I proposed above about the MoS guideline, Fred said it shouldn't be controversial, but I don't want to fight against an anon who might be someone I would trust, or might be just some random person who likes to edit everything Tarret edits. Now, admittedly, I have no idea what "article specific guidelines" means, if that's the special article types I really don't like that at all because several of them were formerly rejected, (they seem to of been taken off the template or something) are proposed, or are just plain not planned out as well as other recognized parts of the MoS. Homestarmy 18:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the point may have been that a good article doesn't blatantly and causelessly violate any of the MoS. Nevertheless, I agree that the specific tests Homestarmy put in are what matter; and have attempted a compromise edit. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:34, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Compelling prose

I note above two people wanted the line about compelling prose removed as it is too subjective and I just wanted to add my voice to that consensus. If this is a standard below FA then there is no need to replicate all the criteria used there is there? Appreciate thoughts on this. Steve block Talk 21:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Not necessarily removed, but it must be far better spelt out what "compelling" actually means. At the moment this part of the guideline is too open to wildly subjective individual interpretation. That isn't anyone's fault, it's just human nature. One man's beautiful prose is another's doggerel, after all. Moreschi Deletion! 21:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Agree with that. Suggest that comprehensible or coherent prose is a better critieria than compelling prose.
Fred-Chess 21:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps "comprehensible"? I think that then something along these lines should be added "This means that the grammar is of a high quality and that the sentence structure is clear and easy to understand on the first reading". O.K, so, that's clunky and is in itself hardly compelling prose, but something like that is needed for clarity's sake. Moreschi Deletion! 22:07, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Sensible. As for wording, I would say "that the grammar is sound;". Yhe people who think all grammar is POV may complain, but no wording will really satisfy them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:03, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Moreschi's kind of wording seems the best to me. (Without the run-on sentence though :D ) Homestarmy 02:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
"Grammar...of a high quality" is both ambiguous (by and large, English is either grammatical or not, there is rarely a continuum), and itself questionable. But this is a tweak; I agree with the intent. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:24, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I've done a (somewhat shorter) version, and used the room to say that we would like excellent prose if we can get it. (1b) and (1c) were in conflict as to whether a lead is necessary; I think short articles should at least be able to get GA, even if not FA. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I have never seen an article which is so short that it has no sections actually meet GA standards. Homestarmy 23:10, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I removed the bit about preferring excellent and compelling prose. Either there is a standard or there isn't, it's not eggs but eggs and ham would be better, it's either eggs or eggs and ham. To me GA is eggs and FA is eggs and ham. Steve block Talk 10:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Very good, Steve, I agree with that. / Fred-Chess 15:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Future films

Star Trek XI meets and exceeds all the GA requirements. The article has over 40 citations, and even though it is a future film, it certainly is stable judging by its history. However, when it was submitted for GAC, it was returned with the comment: "Wait until the film is released to nominate it, o and you missed this PLEASE DO NOT NOMINATE FILMS THAT HAVE NOT YET BEEN RELEASED AS DETAILS WITHIN THE ARTICLE MAY CHANGE BEFORE IT IS RELEASED. M3tal H3ad 01:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)"

Since when are future films not eligible for GA? -- Wikipedical 01:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Since I may not check this page frequently, if a consensus is established please leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. -- Wikipedical 01:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
That doesn't seem necessarily fair, lack of stability doesn't necessarily apply to something that is a future event unless the acticle actually is unstable. I would say that unless the article is unstable right here and now and it does actually fulfill all the criteria, it should be a GA, and if it does become too unstable in the future we can deal with that when it happens. Homestarmy 02:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

We discussed this before in Talk:Harry_Potter_and_the_Order_of_the_Phoenix_(film)#GA_comment (there's also another comment in the section below that) and I also recently put a hidden comment to not include future films, mainly due to their lack of stability as the release date comes closer and there is a fury of new details, plot summaries, box office figures, critical reviews, etc. Also I'd say that this film is not going to be released until 2008, where a lot of details can change, there's a possibility of it being cancelled (highly, highly doubtful, but possible), and the cast changing. I'd wait for it to be released and then renominate it a month or so after the surge of editing dies down when it's released. I'll include a copy of this message on the film's page, and let the reviewing editor make the decision. It looks like a really good article though, so keep up the good work. --Nehrams2020 02:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Unlike the Harry Potter movie, this Star Trek film is likely years away from heavily substantial change in events leading to its production, the cast isn't even finalized. The Harry Potter film, on the other hand, is in the middle of being produced, trailers have already come out, and due to all the hubbub currently going on concerning it, it is far more likely to be unstable right here and now up until its release date, whereas the Star Trek film is not highly unstable at the moment, and there is still a chance for editors of the article to keep new information coming in at a steady, yet slow and stable pace. Also, it doesn't really look like there was much of a "we" involved on the Harry Potter talk page, I think a GA review might be in order, especially since there's now a hidden criteria at stake. Homestarmy 02:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
My apologies for the "we", I was just typing fast and inventing editors while I was at it. I would recommend that there be a poll/guidelines set up for future films/albums/books etc. of whether or not they should be included. It has been my experience in the past and reading from previous quick-fails of articles for having a future tag on it that has me saying no. But if there is consensus of editors who think that it is OK, then I'll support the majority. The only thing I would be worried about is having a good article, and once the film/album/book etc. is released having a large amount of editing once. From there, dedicated editors for the article could by then have dwindled off to pursue improving other articles, forcing the quality of the article to reach below GA and have to be delisted. I'm not saying for this particular article that that will happen, but there will be more future GA candidates later that could face that problem. But again, I'm willing to go through a poll (if that's how it is run for GA guidelines) to see what the general consensus is. --Nehrams2020 03:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
We haven't had any polls in awhile, lately, GA/R's have been leading up to changes in policy, there's plenty of people who like to weigh in on things like this I think, and policy has changed once or twice based on events in GA/R's. Homestarmy 03:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The whole article is a bunch of rumors and speculation

  • The release date is expected to be in 2008; however, neither an official release date nor a title has been announced.
  • Early reports and media speculation - ooo a title heading
  • began quietly discussing the possibility of an eleventh Star Trek feature film.
  • in which he denied that production on The Beginning was going forward, and claimed that Star Trek was dead for the time being.
  • There has been no further word on Erik Jendresen's Star Trek script.
  • unverified reports by TrekMovie.com indicate that the film is on schedule to be released in winter of that year.
  • According to comments by Roberto Orci, the treatment for XI is done,
  • However, unnamed sources speaking to The Trek Movie Report indicated in October that shooting may begin in the spring,
  • Michael Giacchino, the composer for several other Abrams projects, including MI:3, Lost, and Alias has confirmed that he will score XI, although no official announcement has been made
  • No roles have been confirmed for Star Trek XI, nor is there any credible information definitely pointing to any actor or actress in any part in the movie.
  • It is unclear exactly how much power they have, as the full terms of the contract have not been revealed.
  • Other uncorroborated casting rumors have fingered Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman
  • Producer J. J. Abrams has stated repeatedly that "it is infinitely too early to be talking about the plot" of Star Trek XI
  • Abrams pointedly did not confirm details of the film or its plot

Basically all it is are rumors, nothing is mentioned about the actual cast, storyline or production under their sections. When it is released, it will need to be completely re-written to include the cast and the story. This is why i failed it, it fails criteria 2, factually accurate and verifiable, (d) it contains no elements of original research. etc etc. Plus there's one sentence paragraphs, some references aren't formatted properly. etc etc M3tal H3ad 07:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

....Okay, that's different than just being a movie that hasn't been produced yet :/. Homestarmy 13:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Upside-down lists of works

If you spot a list of works, or a list of awards, that is in reverse-chronological order, please either correct it to chronological order as per WP:LOW, or tag it with the template {{MOSLOW}}. This template looks like this:

This article or section contains a list of works that does not follow the Manual of Style for lists of works (often, but not always, due to being in reverse-chronological order) and may need cleanup.

See also other articles contravening the Manual of Style for lists of works.

Please also add WP:LOW to the list of manuals of styles to follow in WP:WIAGA.

Why? It sounds like something you'd do at the very end of an article's development, not something you'd do just to make it good. This guideline seems to be just to maintain consistancy throughout Wikipedia articles, not to necessarily make each article better than it was before. Homestarmy 15:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] If this is a Good Article, I'd hate to see a Bad Article

Jews are defined as "members of the Jewish people". If you look in WP for Jewish people you get redirected to Jews. So this is a circular non-definition. The other definition given refers to the Israelites article, which is a description of religious beliefs, sourced from the Bible. This qualifies as a Good Article?

But the article defines (or tries to define) who Jewish people are, that's why its redirected there. Homestarmy 13:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use in good articles.

One of the criteria for good articles is that they have "a fair use rationale." for any non-free image used. It is not demanded that this rationale be, er, "accurate," or that the rationale be acceptable per our fair use policies. Many good articles violate our fair use policies (most of our articles with fair use images do, but that's another problem.) Can we consider changing this? Hipocrite - «Talk» 20:18, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Make Inline citations mandatory

Why? it makes articles accurate, verifiable, claims are backed up. On failing articles for having no inline citations the nominator uses the excuse "inline citations are not mandatory", or "this isn't an FA process" which questions one to where they got their facts from. I'm wondering why this rule hasn't changed yet? Some articles have 0 in-line citations and make good articles look like a joke - plus many articles at GA/R are being delisted due to having no inline citations. Can we have a vote or something? M3tal H3ad 08:32, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be great to make it mandatory. Would it require just a simple vote to approve this or is there some higher power that determines the requirements for GAs? If it's just a simple vote, we should try to get as many people as possible to vote on it. --Nehrams2020 08:46, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Probably another vote, that's how it was mandatory the first time, but due to large amounts of protest from editors of science and mathematics related articles, in addition to other various people, it was changed to the present version of the citation critera. But with the Scientific citations policy there, I think that will alleviate many people's concerns. Homestarmy 16:04, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Well the information comes from somewhere so i don't see what the big fuss is over adding inline citations. M3tal H3ad 07:20, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, the inline citation requirement was possibly the most disputed of the GA requirements. I don't think it is wrong to have it the way it currently is; we are following what Wikipedia policy says.
Perhaps those people who use the excuse that inline citations are not mandatory should just be told to read the 2b point more carefully. Because it says "[inline citations] are highly desirable, in particular for longer articles." and then "Unambiguous citations of reliable sources are necessary for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged." , per the verifiability policy (that is no longer under WP:V?). So basically, only such material that is likely never to be challenged doesn't need inline citations. I'd say that includes any material that isn't obvious for a general reader.
I realize that it would sometimes be better to have inline citations mandatory, but if you read through some of the discussions on this page, the problem goes the other way too. Far too many people don't know what they should source with inline references, and some reviewers wouldn't look as to what needed sourcing, only to the amount of inline references.
I'd like to add some further arguments and discussions, but I have to do something else right now, and will just save this bit.
Fred-Chess 07:45, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
A work that does not cite its sources simply is not scholarly. By wikipedia rules, anything not cited in this manner is subject to challenge. I do not think that we can honestly call something a good article when this is the case, unless at least some inline citation is present. (unless, of course, the whole thing is from one source, which is another problem entirely) I strongly suggest we return to some sort of inline citation as being necessary to consider an article good. We can leave it up to FA to insist that such references are well formed. --CTSWyneken(talk) 12:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
This does not mean that in-line citations are necessary, or desirable, which is the point at issue. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Paragraph 1(d)

I think we should replace the following:

"(d) necessary technical terms or jargon are briefly explained in the article itself, or an active link is provided."

with the following:

"(d) the article can be understood by any likely reader. Technical terms or jargon necessary to understand the article are defined in it. Technical terms not necessary to understand the article are either defined or hyperlinked to an extant page."

As many people here are no doubt aware, far too many Wikipedia articles are incomprehensible to many readers. This makes them pretty much useless. (The point of an encyclopedia is to tell people things they don't know, so if you can't reach the people who aren't already knowledgeable about the subject, there's no point.) Therefore, I think we need a stronger statement here.

Note that I say the article should be understood by any likely reader. The likely reader of the article on Non-abelian gauge transformation, whatever that is, may be a university physics student, so there's no need to define terms like boson or quark. On the other hand, an article on atoms or molecules may be read by a high school student or an average person with a high school education and little if any background in math or physics. A good article would explain atoms or molecules in a way that such ordinary people can understand them.

I'm also recommending that we specify that terms that are necessary to know to understand the rest of the article should be defined in the article, not simply wikilinked. There are two reasons for this. One, it's annoying to be sent on a wild goose chase around the encyclopedia to understand each sentence. Also, the articles on technical terms or jargon tend to be more complex and more difficult to understand than the first article. To use atom as an example, it wouldn't make sense to say "An atom is a particle with baryonic nuclei held together by vector gauge bosons surrounded by an atomic orbital." If the reader doesn't know what an atom is, he or she is certainly not going to be able to understand the article on gauge bosons. -- Mwalcoff 00:42, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I realize that your intention is good, but I am not confident that it would improve anything; rather it might another b'cratical addition that will just be disputed. I can imagine the disputes regarding "any likely reader". What's interesting is that a general GA reviewers is perhaps not a likely reader for many article. So I oppose the suggestion; I think the current wording is sufficient, and that details can be worked out on an article basis. / Fred-Chess 07:06, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding references to the whereabouts of paintings

I suggest that it is recommended (but not mandatory) that when paintings are used to illustrate an article, a reference is given to the whereabouts of the painting (museum, private collection, etc.), so that interested people can find out more about it and even visit it. I say this because I recently read an article about Marly le Roi in France, illustrated with a painting of the palaces, since demolished. But I found no reference anywhere in Wikipedia that enabled me to find out where the painting could be seen. It seems to me to reasonable and desirable that if a painting is used to illustrate an article, the caption should not only say what it is and who painted it, but also where it is. DavidLlewellyn 09:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Promotion to GA

Nowhere in Wikipedia is an article given such short shrift as is the case in the process of promoting articles to GA status. All it takes is one editor to make or break the article. While GA might not be FA, if there is any point at all in having this classification, editor vetting needs to be part of the process. Speedy delete takes only two editors, AfD requires at least three except in obvious circumstances, and I have never seen an article go to FA with any less than six inputs. If GA status represents the input of the community, then one editor does not cut it. I would like to see this category have some status within Wikipedia; if so, changes need to be made. Dennitalk 23:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, I hope speedy delete doesn't take only two editors, that'd cause some massive problems with so many controversial articles going missing i'd think :) . However, speedy delisting has been recently re-instituted, (though it isn't being practiced yet in quite its previous strength, when we used to do sweeps) a bot is about to be started which will (hopefully) allow us to track GA changes better so people who want to speedy delist an article can be helped with that, (Or just give comments at all) and from the FA nom's i've read lately, GA status is often frequently cited in FA or Peer Review related discussions. Homestarmy 23:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
"Status within Wikipedia". And and whose behalf are you speaking? The backlog and number of individuals who have nominated articles at Wikipedia:Good article candidates indicate that some people consider GA to have some status.
Fred-Chess 01:36, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
We just had a discussion about this to have at least two or three editors (it actually may still be ongoing), and although it does sound appealing, it could be difficult to do with such a large backlog and limited amount of reviewers. We have attempted to recruit new reviewers (I guess I can't say too much about that since I've only been reviewing for less than a month), but by having more than one, it could take twice as long for an article to be reviewed by two or three editors. It usually takes anywhere from a few days to a month for an article to get reviewed, and we have on average about 140 articles or so that need to be reviewed. If we had a lot more reviewers that were available to help remove the backlog and bring the candidates down to say 50 or so, we could possibly implement a two/three editor review process. At this point, we have nearly three times as many candidates as FAC (possibly more!), so for now, one editor will have to review articles. As listed above by Homestarmy, having a quick delisting system helps to weed out the erroneous reviewed articles and help to reinforce the quality of GA articles we have. I wouldn't mind having an editor review an article and have another glance over to see if the first editor missed anything, but again this takes time. I would like to see this occur later when we have recruited enough people to bring the backlog down so that the wait for reviewing an article doesn't go beyond maybe a week or two. --Nehrams2020 05:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite the "stable" requirement

I believe the "stable" requirement should read as follows: "It is stable, i.e. it is not the subject of ongoing edit wars. This does not apply to vandalism and protection or semi-protection as a result of vandalism, or proposals to split or merge the article content."

My firm belief is that editors should spend a few hours in the morning working on an article, and having that article promoted to GA status by that evening. There needs to be a distinct difference between GA and FA; otherwise, we'll have two redundant processes. We should make it so that most established editors can make a GA quickly and efficiently without problems. — Deckiller 23:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I have misgivings about this, when articles are being heavily refactored, if they are reviewed while that's still happening, the article as it was when it was reviewed and the article one day later could be very different. Personally, I just ask articles which are being improved dramatically if its about to end any time soon, and if a few more days are needed, I just put it on hold. Homestarmy 15:29, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm more concerned about reviewers who fail articles on stability because most of the work had been done in the last week. GA should not be somewhere where the editors have to wait several days to nominate just to make sure it's "stable", especially if it's on the course of a FA push. That's another problem; we have reviewers who understand that GA is not FA mark two, and then we have reviewers who may actually set higher stnadards than FAC. — Deckiller 16:00, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Any fails in particular you've seen that are problematic? GA/R has a very large backlog right now, but at least we could talk to reviewers who are just failing anything that's even the least bit unstable, or better yet, suggest in the reviewing instructions that articles which are unstable in good faith should more properly be put on hold. Homestarmy 17:43, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Nothing right now, although I've seen at least two previous cases of stability failure on articles I had worked on (I'd rather not name names); the reviewers ended up passing them, but I think we should clarify the stability requirement just to prevent any further issues. — Deckiller 17:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How short can an article be and still be GA?

There are a couple of articles I've worked on that I felt were probably too short for GA, though I thought they said everything that needed to be said. Venture Science Fiction Magazine is probably long enough, but how about Space Science Fiction Magazine? And if there is a lower limit, does it have to do with GA specifically? I guess it might be the case that if an article is too short for GA, it should be expanded; and if it can't be expanded, it shouldn't exist as a separate article -- it should be merged. That would imply any completed article, however, short, can reach GA. Anyway, what's the lower limit, in people's minds? Mike Christie (talk) 23:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

If the second article was split into maybe one more section and perhaps one more sentence added onto the lead, I think it could be better justified as WP:LEAD compliant, and it would make it look a bit better too in my opinion. After that, it would indeed seem like a GA to me. What often happens with very short articles is that there's often just a body with no sections, which means according to the MoS definition, there is no lead, since a lead is defined as the first paragraph preceding section headings. (At least, it was the last time I checked) Homestarmy 00:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed reworking of the criteria

A good article has the following attributes.

1. It is well written. In this respect:

(a) the prose is clear and the grammar is correct;
(b) it contains a succinct lead section summarising the topic, with the remaining text organised into a system of hierarchical sections (particularly for longer articles); and
(c) it complies with manual of style, specifically the guidelines for layout, jargon, words to avoid, fiction, and list incorporation.

2. It is factually accurate, verifiable, and neutral. In this respect:

(a) it provides references to all sources used;
(b) it cites sources for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, preferably using inline citations for longer articles;[1]
(c) its sources are reliable for the subject at hand;
(d) it contains no original research; and
(e) viewpoints are represented fairly and without bias.

3. It is broad in its coverage. In this respect:

(a) it addresses all major aspects of the topic;[2] and
(b) it stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary details (see summary style).

4. It is stable, i.e. it does not change significantly from day to day and is the subject of ongoing edit wars. Vandalism reversions, proposals to split or merge content, and improvements based on reviewers' suggestions do not apply. Nominations for articles that are unstable because of good faith editing should be put on hold temporarily.

5. It contains images where they are appropriate to the subject, with succinct captions and acceptable copyright status. Fair use images must meet the criteria for fair use images and be labeled accordingly. This criterion does not apply if no images are available.

^[1](begin ref)Unambiguous citation is best done through footnotes or Harvard references located at the end of a sentence or paragraph (read more about it in the essay Wikipedia:Inline citations). Short articles, one page or shorter, can be unambiguously referenced without inline citations. Articles or sections that contain general statements, mathematical equations, logical deductives, "common knowledge", or other material that does not contain disputable statements needn't be referenced. Articles whose topics fall under the guideline on scientific citations should adhere to the guideline.(end ref)

^[2](begin ref)This requirement is slightly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required by WP:FAC, and allows shorter articles and broad overviews of large topics to be listed.(end ref)

Any objections? — Deckiller 06:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I still have problems with changing the stability criteria, typically, just one person is looking at an article in a review, and might not notice that the article they just finished reading 5 minutes ago now has two more paragraphs, one which was re-written, 8 new references, and a new picture, as could easily happen while an article is being radically refactored. I also definently don't like 1 a with "there are no spelling errors", that seems a bit severe, does the criteria say that now, because I never remember that being in there. While of course an editor could fix those errors without being a major contributor, its not spelled out that someone could (or even should) fix that themselves. Homestarmy 16:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Implemented those changes, and I agree about the spelling thing; it should be implied that spelling is important, but a few typos shouldn't result in a fail. — Deckiller 23:16, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I think once people who care alot about how inline referencing should be considered with GA's read this, they may have quite a bit more to say, but now the only thing I can think of to request is that if this refactoring of the criteria is implemented, that perhaps it might be a good idea to make a note on the GAC page recommending that articles which are unstable due to good faith editing should best be put on hold temporarily, instead of just failed. Homestarmy 00:26, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Added a sentence with that recommendation. I agree that all articles should use inline citations, but I was attempting to stay true with the original as much as possible. — Deckiller 00:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../w/h/a/Wikipedia_talk%7EWhat_is_a_good_article__5894.html"