User talk:Thefourdotelipsis

Project News

• There are currently 3,647 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 185 unreviewed articles. Out of 237 total nominations, 42 are on hold, and 10 are under review. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Ian Browne (cyclist), Tony Marchant, Reginald fitz Jocelin, Annie Russell, Brodie Croyle, and Jimmy Moore.

The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (39 articles), Theatre, film, and drama (34 articles), Transport (23 articles), Music (21 articles), Politics and government (18 articles), Culture and society (13 articles), Places (13 articles), and World history (12 articles).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 13 articles up for re-review.

If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!

GA Sweeps Update

Two members joined the sweeps team this month. They are Jwanders and jackyd101. Jwanders swept Physics sub-category quickly and is now sweeping "Astronomy and astrophysics". Meanwhile, jackyd101 is sweeping "Armies, military units and legal issues".

During February, 66 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 33 were kept as GA, 21 delisted, 17 currently on hold or at GAR, and 1 was exempted as they are now Featured Articles.

Reviewer of the Month

Blnguyen is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for February, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Blnguyen is from South Australia and has been editing Wikipedia since 2005. He was also the reviewer for the month of December 2007, so this marks the second time that he has been GAN's Top Reviewer for the Month. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for February!

Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include:

• Blnguyen (talk · contribs)
• David Fuchs (talk · contribs)
• Derek.cashman (talk · contribs)
• Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs)
• Calbear22 (talk · contribs)
• Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• Jackturner3 (talk · contribs)
• TimVickers (talk · contribs)
• VanTucky (talk · contribs)
• Wrad (talk · contribs)

Member News

There are now 185 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 9 new members that joined during the month of February:

• Bibliomaniac15 (talk · contribs)
• Canyouhearmenow (talk · contribs)
• Chrisisinchrist (talk · contribs)
• Ed! (talk · contribs)
• Juliancolton (talk · contribs)
• Kakofonous (talk · contribs)
• LOTRrules (talk · contribs)
• Matthewedwards (talk · contribs)
• Nousernamesleft (talk · contribs)

Did You Know...

• ...that the shortest timespan for a GA to be listed and subsequently delisted is 8 minutes? (The article is Project Chanology and currently listed on WP:GAR)
• ...that the current nominations system started on March 10, 2006?
• ...that in May 2006, number of GA surpassed number of FA? This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!

One GA Requirement - The Lead Section

• By Geometry guy

In this issue, we will focus on one of the requirements for good articles: a good article article should follow Wikipedia's guideline on lead sections. So what does this guideline say, why does it say what it does, and how can good article reviewers help?

The lead section is particularly important, because for many readers, it is the only part of the article which they will read. For instance, they may have come to the article by following a wikilink in another article simply to obtain a quick overview before they continue reading the original article. They may only read the first paragraph, or even the first sentence. On the other hand, one of the joys of Wikipedia is the way that embodies the endlessly branching tree of knowledge; if a lead is well written, it may encourage even such a reader to read on and learn something new.

This is reflected in the terminology: "lead" is a word taken from journalism, where it recognized that many readers will only read the beginning of a newspaper article, and so it is important to convey the key points first, before going into detail. Note that "lead", in this sense, is pronounced as in "leading question" and is sometimes spelled as "lede" by journalists to distinguish it from lead, the metal, which was once very important in typesetting. Wikipedia supports both spellings.

Wikipedia:Lead section is written with all this in mind, and describes two different roles for the lead: first, it should introduce the topic; second it should summarize the article. This is not always as easy as it seems; indeed, it is almost impossible to write a good lead if the article itself does not cover the topic well. It has a side benefit that an article which satisfies this guideline is probably also broad: if the lead is both a good introduction and a summary, then the article probably covers the main points.

The good article process is often the first place in which an article is judged against this criterion, yet many current good articles may not meet it. A common fault is that the lead is purely an introduction, while the rest of the article contains other information, which should be summarized in the lead, but isn't.

So, how can reviewers help to improve this? One approach is to read the rest of the article, and not the lead, first. Make a note of the significant points discussed in the article. There is usually at least one important issue in each section. Then, go back to the lead and ask the following questions:

• Does the first sentence of the lead define the topic, as described in the article?
• Is the most important information mentioned in the first paragraph?
• Is the lead a suitable length for the article? The lead guideline recommends 2–4 paragraphs depending on the article length, but judgment is more important than counting.
• Are each of the significant topics that you noted mentioned in the lead?

If the answer to each of these questions is "yes", then the article probably meets the guideline. If not, you may be able to fix it yourself by summarizing the article. If you can't, then it suggests that there are not only problems with the lead, but also the rest of the article. That is the beauty of Wikipedia:Lead section.

Finally, there isn't universal agreement on whether the lead should contain inline citations. As long as the material in the lead is developed and cited elsewhere in the article, then inline citation is not required. There are exceptions, the most significant being quotations and controversial material about living persons.

Good luck helping more articles meet this important criterion!

From the Editors

Well, this is somewhat GA-related but at the same time not totally GA-related. However, I think this is important. Thanks to everyone who supported me at my 2nd RfA. It passed unanimously at 79 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral. As many are impressed by my work in Good Articles processes, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone giving me a very enjoyable time at GA. There are 2 people that I want to explicitly say thank you to. They are Nehrams2020 and Epbr123. They patiently taught me how to do GA reviews properly in summer 2007. I couldn't achieve better without them. Now that I have the mop and the bucket, some of my time will be working on reducing Commons image backlog. Nevertheless, you will still see me once in a while in matters related to GA.

• OhanaUnited

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

• Dr. Cash

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
• OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent)
• Geometry guy (News Correspondent)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

Project News

• There are currently 3,868 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 195 unreviewed articles. Out of 267 total nominations, 57 are on hold, 13 are under review, and 2 are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: A4232 road, New York State Route 63, Great American Boycott, First Great Western, Duck Soup, Sanja Matsuri, Code of Conduct (affiliate marketing), Prospect Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, Aliens (film), and Roanoke Regional Airport.

The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (27 articles), Sports and recreation (25 articles), Transport (24 articles), Music (19 articles), War and military (19 articles), Politics and government (18 articles), Religion, mysticism and mythology (16 articles), Literature (14 articles), World history (14 articles), and Video and computer games (14 articles).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 12 articles up for re-review.

GA Sweeps Update

The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of March, a total of 92 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 74 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and 18 were delisted. There are currently 14 articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions. Congratulations to Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs), who sweeped a whopping 51 articles during the month! Jackyd101 (talk · contribs) also deserves congrats for sweeping a total of 26 articles!

Reviewer of the Month

Dihydrogen monoxide is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for March, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Dihydrogen monoxide hails from Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, and has been editing Wikipedia since April 6, 2007. He has contributed to 8 Featured articles and is an avid reviewer and contributor to the Good articles program. Other reviewers should check out his Noob's Guide to GA Reviewing. Congratulations to Dihydrogen monoxide!

Other outstanding reviewers during the month of March include:

• GaryColemanFan (talk · contribs)
• Limetolime (talk · contribs)
• Malachirality (talk · contribs)
• Nikki311 (talk · contribs)
• Wrad (talk · contribs)

Member News

There are now 195 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 13 new members that joined during the month of March:

• AndreNatas (talk · contribs)
• Dank55 (talk · contribs)
• English836 (talk · contribs)
• ExplorerCY (talk · contribs)
• JayJ47 (talk · contribs)
• Mastrchf91 (talk · contribs)
• MBK004 (talk · contribs)
• Million Moments (talk · contribs)
• Neparis (talk · contribs)
• Nicholas Perkins (talk · contribs)
• NimiTize (talk · contribs)
• PGPirate (talk · contribs)
• Zenlax (talk · contribs)

This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!

To delist or not to delist, that is the question

So you’ve found an article that, on the face of it, does not merit its good article status. What next? Especially where there are many glaring issues that need addressing, it’s tempting to just revoke its GA status and remove it from the list, but although we are encouraged as editors to be bold, this approach (known to some as "bold delisting") is not recommended good practice. There are many reasons why a listed article might not meet the assessment criteria—it’s always possible that it never did, and was passed in error, but more likely the criteria have changed or the article quality has degraded since its original assessment. Either way, we should treat its reassessment with no less tact and patience than we would a fresh nomination.

This, in fact, provides a good starting point for the delisting process. Approach the article as though it has been nominated for GA review. Read it and the GA criteria carefully, and provide a full reassessment on the article talk page. Explain where and why the article no longer meets the criteria, and suggest remedies.

Having explained why the article no longer meets current GA criteria, allow its editors time to fix it! In keeping with the above approach, it may help to treat the article as on hold. There is no need to tag it as such, but give editors a reasonable deadline, and consider helping out with the repair work. Bear in mind that more flexibility may be required than for a normal hold—the editors did not request or expect your reassessment and will probably have other projects taking up their time. They may not have worked on the article for months or even years, and at worst the article may have been abandoned and its authors no longer active. As always, communication is the key. It sometimes helps to post messages to relevant WikiProjects (found at the top of the article talk page), or to contact editors directly (this tool is useful for identifying active editors for any given article).

Only once the above process has run its course, and sufficient improvement has not been forthcoming, is it time to think about delisting the article. Communicate your final decision on the article talk page, even if there was no response to your reassessment and hold, and take the time to fill in the various edit summaries on the article talk and GA list pages to ensure the delisting is transparent and trackable. If you have any doubts about your final decision, you can list the article at Good article reassessment or contact one of the GA mentors, who will be happy to advise.

Article reassessment is perhaps the single most controversial function of our WikiProject, and the one with the most potential to upset and alienate editors. Yet it is one of the most necessary too, since without the ability to revoke an article’s status we would be unable to maintain quality within the project. However, if we approach reassessment sensitively and with the goal of improving articles to the point where sanctions are unnecessary, we will ensure that delisting is the last resort, not the first.

• Delisting instructions

From the Editors

As we near the 4,000 Good Articles milestone, the project continues to grow and to gain respect in the Wikipedia community. Nevertheless, we continue to have a large backlog. If every member of WikiProject Good Articles would review just one article each day during the month of April, the backlog would be eliminated!

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
• OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent)
• EyeSerene (Article)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

Project News

• There are currently 4,050 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 195 unreviewed articles. Out of 227 total nominations, 16 are on hold, 14 are under review, and two are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Fighting Tommy Riley, Brock Lesnar, Cluj-Napoca, Wolf's Rain, Brian Kendrick, and North and South (TV serial).

The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (45), Sports and recreation (34), Music (18), Transport (15), World history (14), Politics and government (13), and Places (12).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 17 articles up for re-review.

GAN Reviewer of the Month

Noble Story (talk · contribs) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for April, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Noble Story joined Wikipedia on May 16, 2007. He is a big fan of the Houston Rockets, and edits many related articles, as well as articles on basketball in general. Congratulations to Noble Story (talk · contribs) on being April's GAN Reviewer of the Month!

Other outstanding reviewers during the month of April include:

• Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs)
• Drewcifer3000 (talk · contribs)
• Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• GaryColemanFan (talk · contribs)
• Gary King (talk · contribs)
• Jbmurray (talk · contribs)
• Kaypoh (talk · contribs)
• Lpangelrob (talk · contribs)
• Mitchazenia (talk · contribs)
• Nikki311 (talk · contribs)
• Realist2 (talk · contribs)
• Redtigerxyz (talk · contribs)
• ThinkBlue (talk · contribs)

Member News

There are now 212 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 17 new members that joined during the month of April:

• Affinity likely (talk · contribs)
• Climie.ca (talk · contribs)
• Edmund Patrick (talk · contribs)
• Eustress (talk · contribs)
• IMatthew (talk · contribs)
• Kironide (talk · contribs)
• Makeshift Thackery (talk · contribs)
• Mm40 (talk · contribs)
• Nikki311 (talk · contribs)
• Noble Story (talk · contribs)
• Peanut4 (talk · contribs)
• Realist2 (talk · contribs)
• SorryGuy (talk · contribs)
• Sushant gupta (talk · contribs)
• ThinkBlue (talk · contribs)
• WBOSITG (talk · contribs)
• Will381796 (talk · contribs)

This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!

GA Topic

Do you know what a GA topic is? If you are not nodding your head, or don't know what I'm talking about, then you should pay attention to this article.

There are ten GA top-level topics (but you will spot the eleventh as this article goes along). These topics are: Arts, Language and literature, Philosophy and religion, Everyday life, Social sciences and society, Geography and places, History, Engineering and technology, Mathematics, and Natural sciences. Each of these topics are further narrowed down to more specific topics. For example, Arts can be narrowed down to Art and architecture, Music, and Theatre, film and drama. But let's not get into sub-topics in this article because of its depth.

Now you will probably ask, "I already knew this, so what is your point?" What I want to illustrate is that some people often forget a step when they promote an article to GA. After they have posted their review in the article talk page, added the article name to the corresponding topic in the good article page, increased the GA count by 1, and added the {{GA}} to article talk page, many reviewers tend to forget to add the topic parameter in {{GA}} or {{ArticleHistory}}. You can browse the topic parameter abbreviations at on this page as well as what each top-level GA topic means, because sometimes it can be chaotic and confusing to pick a topic. For example, should On the Origin of Species be placed under the Natural Science topic (because it's related to evolution), or under the Language and Literature topic (because it is a book)? The correct answer is to place it under Language and literature topic, because its categorization as a proper title supercedes other categories.

Let's go back to the page that shows GA topics; does anyone spot the eleventh topic? Yes, Category:Uncategorized good articles is the 11th topic, only it shouldn't be there. Articles that do not have a topic parameter in either {{GA}} or {{ArticleHistory}} will be placed in this category. The topic "Uncategorized" is not very informative, is it? So if you have time, you can consider cleaning up the articles that are left in this category and move them to the appropriate category by adding a topic parameter.

That's it for this month, I hope you learned a little from it.

GA Sweeps Update

The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of April, a total of 26 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 15 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and two were delisted. There are currently six articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions. One article was exempted from review because it was promoted to FA. Two articles were exempted from review because they were already delisted by another member in the community.

We are once again recruiting new sweeps participants. Candidates should be very strong and comfortable in reviewing GA and familiar with the GA processes and criteria. If you are interested, please contact OhanaUnited for details.

Did You Know...

• ...that there are slightly less than twice as many Good Articles as Featured Articles?
• ...that the total number of Good Articles and Featured Articles combined is 6,085?
• ...that different languages have different symbols representing GA? (Alemannic uses , Bavarian uses , Czech and French use , Estonian, Icelandic, and Swedish use , Esperanto and German use , Polish, Spanish, and Turkish use , Portuguese uses , Russian uses , Ukrainian uses )
  

Note: Lithuanian and Serbian have their own symbol but only uploaded locally. Other languages not listed above either have the same symbol as english or they don't have GA process.

From the Editors

There is currently a debate on adding a small green dot to the top right corner of all Good Articles that pass the criteria, similar to the small bronze star that is added to the top right corner of Featured Articles. Members of WikiProject Good Articles are encouraged to participate in the debate on this page.

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
• OhanaUnited (Article, GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

Project News

• There are currently 4,266 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 157 unreviewed articles. Out of 215 total nominations, 44 are on hold, 13 are under review, and one is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Choctaw, One Night Stand (2007), Justin Tuck, Tristan Tzara, The Stake Out (Seinfeld episode), Impalement arts, Backlash (2007), Adelaide Rams, and Sam Cowan.

The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (31), Sports and recreation (31), Transport (24), Music (13), and Art and architecture (11)

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 4 articles up for re-review.

GA Sweeps Update

The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of May, a total of 82 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 71 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and 11 were delisted. There are currently 15 articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions.

We are once again recruiting new sweeps participants. Candidates should be very strong and comfortable in reviewing GA and familiar with the GA processes and criteria. If you are interested, please contact OhanaUnited for details.

GAN Reviewer of the Month

Giggy (talk · contribs) (a.k.a. Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs)) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for May, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Giggy had a whopping 45 reviews during the month of May! Congratulations to Giggy (talk · contribs) on being May's GAN Reviewer of the Month!

Other outstanding reviewers during the month of May include:

• Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• Eustress (talk · contribs)
• GaryColemanFan (talk · contribs)
• Ice Cold Beer (talk · contribs)
• Juliancolton (talk · contribs)
• Nikki311 (talk · contribs)
• ThinkBlue (talk · contribs)
• Yllosubmarine (talk · contribs)

Also, with 19 nominations, Mitchazenia (talk · contribs) is the nominator of the month, followed by TonyTheTiger (talk · contribs) with 8 nominations submitted.

Member News

There are now 216 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 6 new members that joined during the month of April:

• Jack Bethune (talk · contribs)
• Jordan Timothy James Busson (talk · contribs)
• Limetolime (talk · contribs)
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Fan (talk · contribs)
• Mm40 (talk · contribs)
• Redmarkviolinist (talk · contribs)

This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!

New GA Review Process - Review Subpages

In case you haven't noticed, we initiated a new process for GA Reviews at the end of last month. The {{GA nominee}} template was modified to direct new reviews initiated on an article to begin on a subpage of article talkspace (e.g. [[Talk:Article/GA#]], where '#' is the current number of GA reviews conducted for the article, incremented automatically, starting with 1). The primary reason for this change is to address some concerns made by several Wikipedians that previous GA reviews are not easily accessible in archives, the way that featured article reviews and peer reviews are, since the review is conducted on the article's talkspace, instead of in a subpage of the featured article space or peer review space. The reason we opted to move GA reviews to article talkspace (instead of GA space) is to better maintain the personal relationship between editor(s) and reviewer(s) by keeping reviews done in an area where editors can easily access it. Nonetheless, we still desired to have better archiving and maintenance of past reviews, so that GA ultimately becomes more accountable.

When an article is nominated, the nominator adds the template using a substitution, by adding {{subst:GAN|subtopic=<name of subtopic for article at GAN>}}, as well as lists the article (as usual) at WP:GAN in the appropriate category.

When a reviewer initiates a review of an article, all that needs to be done is to read the template on the article's {{GA nominee}} template on its talk page, and click on the link to start the review. When the reviewer clicks on that link, they will also see some instructions on how to start a review of a GAN. For new reviewers, there's also a link to the Good Article criteria, as well as to the Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles page and the mentors list. Once an article is reviewed, the GA review page should be transcluded onto the main article talk page, by adding {{Talk:Article/GA#}} to the bottom of the talk page. This is to ensure maintain the transparency of the GA process, as well as to make editors of the article in question aware that the review is taking place. When an article is either passed or failed, there's really nothing different to do in the process, although reviewers are encouraged to utilize the {{ArticleHistory}} template, linking to the GA review subpage with the 'action#link' parameter.

Did You Know...

• ... that there are slightly more than twice as many Good Articles (4,266) as there are Featured Articles?
• ... that Giggy has some really neat and useful tools to assist reviewers in conducting their reviews?
• ... that there are ten experienced reviewers listed on the GA mentors list that can offer assistance or a second opinion in reviewing articles?

From the Editors

A GA working party has initiated discussion on ways to improve the Good Article project and processes. The goal of the working party is to come up with suggestions for improvement based on recent issues and concerns raised in the past, primarily in the wake of the Great Green Dot Debate of May 2008. The discussion can be found here. Members of the working party include: Dank55 (talk · contribs), Derek.cashman (talk · contribs), EyeSerene (talk · contribs), Giggy (talk · contribs), Gwinva (talk · contribs), LaraLove (talk · contribs), Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs), and OhanaUnited (talk · contribs).

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor)
• Giggabot, Giggy (Distributor)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!