Wikipedia talk:Good article reassessment/guidelines

Changes
I've made some grammatical and procedural changes to the templates. I think further changes are necessary. They are being discussed at Talk:GA/R. Lara Love T / C  17:51, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Comments
Near the bottom, when it says that only experienced reviewers should archive certain contentious reviews, does that really mean reviewers in general, or experienced archivists? I don't know if I mind either way, but I just wanted to be sure about what its intended to mean. Homestarmy 23:09, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * If I understand correctly, it refers to those editors who are experienced with the GA/R reviews and frequently archive discussions. "Experienced archivists" may be more appropriate. Lara Love  T / C  06:33, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Joopers
Stop jacking with our project pages. While I agree with you that your edit is insignificant, it's also unnecessary. Leave our project pages alone. It is not your place to change things to the way you want them and then demand that we, the people who've actually devoted time to this project before being pissed off by it, justify our reverts of your changes. Lara  ♥ Love  14:40, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit confilict]

Being bold
I made a good faith, bold change to the guidance from:-

Check the good article criteria to see which criteria it fails to meet. For problems which are easy to resolve, it might be better to be bold and fix them yourself.

to:-

Check the good article criteria to see which criteria it fails to meet. For problems which are easy to resolve, it will almost always be better to be bold and fix them yourself.

Lara reverted with the frankly, appaling edit summary of "Stop jacking with our project". Heavens! I get an assumption of bad faith, no discussion of the merit or otherwise of the change, a suggestions of WP:OWN for this project (can't remember seeing where I pick up my tie to join), and rank high-handed reversion all in 5 words. Congratulations!

To substance - can someone tell me why it might is so preferable to almost always in terms of improving our encyclopedia? In what cicumstances would it not be better to be be bold and fix easy problems? --Joopercoopers 14:43, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * "Almost always" implies that the changes should be made. "Might" suggests it as an option. As I've stated countless times, we're not required to make any changes. As far as the "Stop jacking with our project", don't attempt to make it appear as if that is your only edit to our project pages. You've been reverted on others. You've got discussions going on at no less (if I remember correctly) three or our project talk pages. You're pissed off about some GA/R reviews of articles you're involved with and rather than go to the talk pages of the commenting reviewers to alert them to your request for follow up on GA/R, you've blown up every project talk page you can find. Your writing guides for us, altering our criteria and guidelines. So be sure to take credit for your edits rather than attempt to make it look like I'm assuming bad faith. It's not an assumption. Lara   ♥ Love  14:58, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It's the suggestion that they're your pages I'm struggling with - last time I checked, I was encouraged to try and make wikipedia a better place, wherever that might be. How else might change at wikipedia be effected - by editors like you 'suddenly seeing the light?' --Joopercoopers 15:08, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That's laughable. In fact, I did LOL. Let's just be real about it. You have absolutely zero knowledge of my contributions to the encyclopedia, obviously. I refer to it as "our project" because we work in it. If you wanted to add your name to the list of participants and do something productive without causing a disruption, you'd fall into that "our". But as it is now, you're an editor pissed off at GA/R. There's a separate but equally lengthy list somewhere for that, I'm sure. With that said, my vision is pathetic, but I see the light just fine. Lara   ♥ Love  17:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

So shall we compromise and say "it will almost always be better to be bold and fix them yourself, but this is not mandatory" --Joopercoopers 15:11, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Or you can just leave it as it is considering that's what is says now, only in four words rather than 18. Lara   ♥ Love  15:25, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think the change is likely to be factual, many mistakes in articles have to do with things related to the topic itself, and I seriously doubt any GA reviewers are familiar with the majority of all articles and topics which have come by GAC. There have been several times where suggestions i've made on an article would of resulted in me getting things very, very wrong, even when the way I suspected an article should be fixed seemed appropriate. Homestarmy 21:34, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

If you read any article and see any problem that you can fix, you should fix it instead of complaining about it. That is true for any page on any wiki, independent of the GA process. I have therefore fixed the wording on the project page. If everybody cooperates in the spirit of sofixit instead of complaining, we can improve the quality of the encyclopedia faster and with less drama. Kusma (talk) 09:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Speaking of drama, I reverted your edit. As you can see from the discussion above, consensus is not for it to say "should". As Homestarmy noted above, there are often instances where making the changes aren't possible by the reviewer for lack of knowledge on the topic. Additionally, as has been stated many many times before, we are reviewers. It's not to be required of us to fix problems. We point them out and fix if we so choose.  Lara Love  14:49, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It is still better if you fix problems as you come across them. If somebody takes the time to write "there is a typo in section 2" instead of fixing the typo, that is a waste of effort and only serves to annoy the editor who reads the review. It can be bad to point out trivialities that are easier to fix than to write about; with my edit, I was trying to encourage people to fix simple problems instead of complaining about them. Kusma (talk) 15:14, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yea, which is what the guidelines already says, as we told Jooopers a couple weeks ago, as I'm sure you know. Speaking of the annoyance in it, however, consider that these changes should be taken care of before the article is nominated for GA. We review many articles (different reviewers review at a different pace, but most review regularly), so do you think it is not annoying for there to be minor issues that could easily (and should) have been corrected prior to nomination? You're looking at it from a single point of view, yours, as the editor. From the reviewer stand-point, we shouldn't be required to fix it just because it's minor. A reviewer is not in any way required to make any changes. It is up to them. Most reviewers do make changes, so it's really irrelevant anyway, but for the few, if any, that prefer to list all issues regardless of difficulty to fix, that's their decision and we're not going to prevent them from reviewing because of that decision. Therefore, please stop altering our guidelines.  Lara Love  15:23, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Minor typos are something that happens to everybody, and that are much harder for an original author to see and correct than for others who review the article. Anyway, there is no reason why Joopercoopers or I should stop altering guidelines if we think it helps improve our encyclopedia project. I view the idea that "authors" and "reviewers" are separate as counterproductive, just like the common idea that "admins" and "editors" are on different sides of some imagined fence. We're all in the same boat, and any artificial fences that some people construct are contrary to the wiki principle. Kusma (talk) 08:22, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see reviewers and editors on different sides of the project. Nor do I see editors and admins on different sides. I see participants of the GA project and those not on different sides of an imagined fence in that we understand the project and the innerworkings of it whereas you and Joopers clearly do not. I really don't get how people think it's okay to just interject their opinions into the guidelines of a project they don't work in. Your wording isn't going to change anything. It's pointless, and it's just stirring up drama. So I'm asking that you and Joopers and any other editors he has in mind to come alter the guideline, stop disrupting our project.  Lara Love  14:04, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I work in the same project as you do, it is called Wikipedia. I haven't been trying to disrupt it. Kusma (talk) 14:17, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, whether you've been trying or not, you have been disrupting the GA project. :)  Lara Love  15:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Sweeps
Why did Borderline personality disorder pass September sweeps when it has had uncited statements since July? Can someone deal with this? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 03:43, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Here's another one that needs to be dealt with: Large Group Awareness Training.  Goodness, those psych articles need to be watched.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:56, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Weird, I reviewed that LGAT one myself, and it was nowhere near as bad as it is now... :( Homestarmy (talk) 04:08, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to accept these as wikipedia guidelines
These proposals in their current form are well established and already currently in use, they should be afforded fuller status to prevent damaging circumventions when reviewing Good Articles. The guidelines are easy to read and understand. They afford respect to all parties involved. The guidelines here are not ambiguous. The guidelines offer the chance to allow Good Articles to retained or delisted to everyone's satisfaction.--ZincBelief (talk) 08:36, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Article fails to provide adequate guidance - how do I...?
I have been trying to follow the instructions in these reassessment guidelines, in order to correctly end my individual GA review (of the article Culture, but they do not cover: I hope someone can provide some help on these questions. This whole business of going through this review procedure is very time-consuming this first time round... and may deter me from instigating future article reviews. --AlotToLearn (talk) 03:04, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * what to do about the separate GAR discussion page itself (do I need to archive it, and how? What if people keep on adding comments to it?), nor
 * what to do about the copy of that page which is reproduced via inclusion of a sort of template near the bottom of the ordinary Talk page of the article (should I remove the template near the bottom of the page that causes the image of the GAR page to appear? Otherwise, what is to stop more discussion going into the shared page, even though my review is completed?), nor
 * why the GAlist template line that has to be edited at the top of the Talk page, replacing the date with five tildes, and while it had |page=1|GARpage=1| it now has to be edited to insert a "replacement page" number, but what is the "replacement page" that n has to equal, nor
 * what happens to the next bit on that line being edited, ie GARpage=1? It looks like I have to remove that bit as it is not included on the sample line given in the guideline, nor
 * what to do if the article fails my review (as it has) and so is being delisted (done), but there is no GA template on the Talk page to remove (which the assessment guidelines tell me to do), instead there are some wikiproject notice templates, each of which rate the article as a GA, and give it various importance ratings. Do I edit the wikiproject notice template ratings?  What do I replace GA by?, nor
 * whether I should give my reasons for delisting the article, and if so, where I should do so?

Question
On the off-chance that anyone is watching this page, what is the process for delisting after a community review agrees that a GA should not be/should not have been listed? Can we remove it ourselves, or do we need to find an uninvolved editor? SlimVirgin talk  contribs 16:51, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * After a community GAR, the person closing the discussion delists the article. If the review has taken place elsewhere (not particularly desirable), then please use an individual reassessment to record the delisting process in the article history. Geometry guy 22:41, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

About GAR nominations
I refer to the general and not the specific: GAR is about article reassessment or article status and not about dispute resolution, as far as I am aware. To me, it seems to follow that a nomination for a GAR should not contain criticism of individuals who participated in any GA review fail or de-listing. Since GAR is not the arena to discuss disagreements or disputes, then any people who may be criticised in the nomination will be off-topic, if they addressed the criticism or implied criticism in the nomination heading the GAR. Surely, it would be sensible to deal with this at the bud and not allow implied criticism in the nomination, and make this part of the guidelines. Snowman (talk) 21:33, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Criticism of individuals is contrary to WP:NPA. Criticism of individual comments in a review can be unhelpful or part of healthy discussion, depending. I'm not convinced that it is worth tweaking these guidelines or the community reassessment intro, but it may be helpful. (See also WT:Good article reassessment/Saint Croix Macaw/1 for background.) Geometry guy 22:41, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I see. I guess it is all in WP:NPA anyway. Snowman (talk) 23:41, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

BEFORE for GAR
My purposes in today's addition are these:


 * 1) Reassessment takes up a lot of people's time.  GAR averages 70 hits a day.  Most listings are up for about a month or so.  That means that any given sentence is likely to be read by dozens of times.  Typing up something like "And there's a typo in the third paragraph" means that you're wasting a lot of people's time, not just your own.  It takes longer to type a description of a typo than to fix it, and it takes much longer to have the community read it and comment on it than for you to fix it.  WP:SOFIXIT, rather than trying to inflate your list of complaints with trivia like this.  GAR needs to hear about the problems that you can't solve in a few seconds.  (Also, a refusal to fix simple things like this is usually taken as a sign of bad faith, which means people are less likely to be sympathetic to your description of any real problems.)
 * 2) A lot of reassessment requests list the same handful of made-up non-criteria.  Unlike the complaints about trivial typos, I don't think that these editors are trying to make their list of complaints look more impressive; I think they honestly don't know what the criteria are.  Looking at the list should help them figure it out.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:45, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Questions
1) Can the recent changes to the GAR process be summarized as "we are no longer doing individual reassessments, all reassessments from now on are community reassessments"?

1a) If so, we should change GAR and delete the "To start an individual reassessment..." bullet.

2) On Feb 23, we will begin mass-delisting 200ish Doug Coldwell GAs, and 200ish pro forma GAR entries will be created. Should we make an exception and list these as individual reassessments, to avoid clogging up the GAR community reassessment logs (e.g. Good article reassessment/Archive 69)? – Novem Linguae (talk) 19:10, 9 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Ok, regarding 1a, I investigated the "To start an individual reassessment ..." text. It's buried in Template:GAR/linktext. The whole thing is more complicated than it looks and will need someone good with templates. I see you guys started Requested templates so you are way ahead of me. – Novem Linguae (talk) 19:17, 9 February 2023 (UTC)