Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Salt/1

Salt

 * • [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment/Salt/1&action=watch Watch article reassessment page] • Most recent review
 * Result: Keep as GA. WP:RETAIN is not a GA criterion in itself, and a two-day edit war consisting of spelling changes cannot be read as a long-term stability concern. As pointed out, per the GAR instructions, this shouldn't have been brought here in the first place; the issue was quickly resolved on the article's talk page. -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Edit warring due to WP:RETAIN. VMS Mosaic (talk) 15:19, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Edit warring on an article means that the article is not stable, so it by definition does not meet WP:GACR. VMS Mosaic (talk) 09:40, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The stability is requiered at the moment of the GA review, not when the article is already a GA. Also WP:GAR states that "Requesting reassessment during a content dispute or edit war is usually inappropriate, wait until the article stabilizes and then consider reassessment." ©   Tb hotch ™ (en-2.5). 01:04, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Any instability in this article is at least in part due to the actions of VMS Mosaic. To contribute to the instability and then to use instability as a reason for reassessing the article's status seems wrong to me. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:02, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

"Use this process if you find an article listed as a good article which does not satisfy the good article criteria." What part of that is hard to understand? This is a GA article which is undergoing edit warring with multiple editors other than myself. Cwmhiraeth, as an editor involved in creating this mess, I see your comment as being wrong to me. In fact I see a cabal of GA editors changing the spelling of an article per their non-neutral personal preference as being wrong to me. VMS Mosaic (talk) 12:16, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Withdraw reassessment nomination. This nomination is both inappropriate and in bad faith. After Cwmhiraeth rewrote the article to bring it up to GA status in an exhaustive nomination, VMS Mosaic objected to the fact that she used UK English (of all things), and has been edit-warring with a number of people to put the article into American English. That's the entirety of the instability he is complaining about. Instability is not a valid reason for GA review, and this nomination is nothing but a POINT-y tantrum. – Quadell (talk) 13:00, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * One other editor made recent changes toward US English, but decided to back off in order to avoid getting tangled up in the dispute. One editor even tried to have my WP:GAR speedily deleted (which was a total misuse of speedy delete) in order to silence me.  Fortunately, someone (I need to thank whoever it was) overruled the speedy delete.  The issue is that I'm the first non-stub editor of the article who claims to have made the spelling consistent per WP:ENGVAR six years ago, and who has watched it ever since. Due to ill health I didn't see the spelling change (in direct violation of WP:RETAIN) until two weeks after it occurred. The unfortunate part (beyond my being sick) is that a cabal of GA editors believe they have the power to change article spellings at will without any possibility of decent.  GA editors started this completely meaningless mess and now refuse to clean up the mess they knowingly and willfully created. Given that this was started by the GA process, it should be resolved through it, so this is a perfectly valid request per WP:GAR. VMS Mosaic (talk) 13:28, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, multiple GA editors/administrators have shown bad WP:FAITH. Just to list a few: an invalid speedy delete request, bold faced lies about the spelling variants in several edits, admitting to willfully ignoring parts of WP:ENGVAR, claims that because the article is "international" it should use UK spelling, claims that this is nothing but a tantrum on my part (yes, I do take my neutral role as a specialist in WP:ENGVAR edits seriously given that I make many thousands of them), false claims that I am trying to change a long established UK spelling (even though the article has been US spelling for six years), ....
 * If didn't need a health break, there is a lot more bad WP:FAITH I could list, but my ability to edit has ended for tonight. VMS Mosaic (talk) 13:45, 3 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Close, per Quadell. This is more like a vendetta rather than a real assessment. WP:GACR is for articles listed at WP:GAN not WP:GA. WP:FACR has a less ambiguous explanation what "stable" mean and where it applies: "it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process", emphasis in the last sentence "except in response to the featured article process". It is not fair that because VMS has been disputing something in the article, the article is delisted because of this. If I edit-war at the WP:TFA, Bob Feller, I have the right to WP:FAR it? Of course not. ©   Tb hotch ™ (en-2.5). 23:04, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

As the discussion has been started here, I think that it can be continued here. This GAR could be one of the features of a dispute over language varation, but I am not entirely certain. If this is a dispute, then the tie breaker rules would apply. The guidelines are prescriptive when there is a dispute about language localisation. If there is a dispute here, then the guidelines can be applied, and I think that the most relevant issue would be WP:RETAIN and in particular; "When no English variety has been established and discussion cannot resolve the issue, the variety used in the first non-stub revision is considered the default. If no English variety was used consistently, the tie is broken by the first post-stub contributor to introduce text written in a particular English variety." I have looked at the early use of language in the first 18 months, I am of the general impression that both UK and USA English are used to the extent that localisation is confusing; although my impression is that UK English predominates. The user who created the Salt article went on to made a number of edits. The creator's user page says that he or she lives in Slovenia and that he or she is not a native speaker of English and it seems that he or she used a mixture of UK and USA spellings, which clouded the issue of language localisation. Snowman (talk) 12:23, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

The "Salt" article as it was when it was created at 11:51, 14 March 2005 had 6 level-2 sections and a prose size of 3969 Bytes or 670 words. It was not tagged with a stub template and it has the general appearance of a Start article. On its day of creation the article did not a have a stub template added, so it was not classified as a stub and never has been. I am going to examine each edit from article creation to find the tie breaker using UK and USA digital spell checkers separately with backup using the on-line Oxford English Dictionary, including both its USA and world dictionaries (I have access to the full OED site via my password). Anyone is welcome to check the spellings and I welcome double checking of my analysis. Note that sometimes pages containe both the UK and the USA versions of a word (ie aluminium and aluminum). Aluminium and aluminium may not be localising words because the default on chemical related pages is aluminium on the Wiki; however, the article appears to be a food article rather than a chemical article. I am listing the edits one by one from the time of article creation on 14 March 2005: Snowman (talk) 12:23, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


 * 1 at 11:51. USA: grayish, payed, aluminum, goiter. UK: grey, colour, iodised, flavour, aluminium,
 * 2 at 11:52 (diff). Localising words as above.
 * 3 at 11:54 (diff). Localising words as above.
 * 4 at 11:59 (diff). Localising words as above.
 * 5 at 12:03 (diff). Localising words as above.
 * 6 at 12:07 (diff). Localising words as above.
 * 7 at 12:15 (diff). One localising word added: UK: practise
 * 8 at 12:17 (diff). One word changed: Payed -> Paid (might not be a localising word)
 * 9 at 12:18 (diff). Localising words as above.
 * 10 at 12:22 (diff). Localising words as above.

It is actually quite difficult tracing this and using various spelling dictionaries on each page and diff, but anyone can double check. I hope I have put the links and diffs correctly; but if not, then reviewers can follow the edits for themselves. "Payed" is not UK English, but I am not sure if it is USA English or not. Does the use of the UK "practise" rather than the USA "practice" swing the tie breaker to UK English? Is there already a consensus or should the tie breaker apply? Any comments? Snowman (talk) 12:23, 4 November 2013 (UTC)