Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force/Archive 1

Awards
I'd like to offer awards for this. For every article correctly assessed with the oldid and the topic, editors can get credit towards various awards.

My recommendation: 50 = The Barnstar of Diligence 100 = The Tireless Editors Barnstar 200 = Good Article Medal of Merit -- Lara Love  04:37, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Awards will be given out at the end of the project.

Record count

 * 1) - 117
 * Awarded the Tireless Contributors Barnstar on August 3, 2007. Lara ♥Love  16:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) - 117, at 16:08, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Awarded the Tireless Contributors Barnstar on August 3, 2007. Lara ♥Love  16:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) - 128, at 16:37, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Awarded the Tireless Contributors Barnstar on August 7, 2007. Lara ♥Love  16:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) - 171, as of 21:00, 29 July 2007 (UTC). Gee! I wish I could see in the future, like Masem, though I thought he would have accomplished so much more by then...
 * Awarded the Tireless Contributors Barnstar on August 3, 2007. Lara ♥Love  16:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) - 272 592 as of 0500, 03 Aug 2007 (UTC).  I guess I just get in a rhythm when I do these...
 * Masem has been awarded the Good Article Medal of Merit, however, I'm considering taking it back and holding it until 2008 when, as Gosgoog pointed out, Masem actually achieves his 272. Lara ♥Love  19:40, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Adding the date?
Could someone clarify what purpose adding the date to GA does? Giggy UCP 00:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well... I think I can clarify. I was once under the impression that a date at that locale was equivalent to the actionXdate but after setting it a bunch of times, I revisited the GA scripting and realized characters in that locale are fairly inert; it doesn't much matter what is written there, including nothing whatsoever. I'm not setting anything there the next group I do; I'll just set oldid and topic fields. — Gosgood 07:27, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

GA v. ArticleHistory and what is the long term value-add of setting the topic field?
Sooooo.... to get a feel for this, I took a pass through the more recent additions to the GA level, adding topic fields where instances of lived. I had no problem figuring out appropriate topic values, because these just map to the eleven top level classifications at WP:GA; it was a routine lookup: find where reviewers put an article, read the top level header, find the equivalent value for the topic key word, set the key=value pair in the GA template ... next. The eleven topic categories repopulate nicely, and the uncategorized article category lose members. How nice. As Walkerma noted in the parent discussion, one can get a picture of how GA rated articles distribute across the eleven major categories.

But —  not a complete picture. neither knows nor cares about the GA template categorizing scheme. You may have noticed that reviewers who tag with ArticleHistory don't see the talk page get chucked into Category:Uncategorized good articles. The gacat field of ArticleHistory bears no particular relationship to the GA template categorizing scheme; use it, and the articles get thrown into various Biography related categories, categories that are not applicable to most articles; Gimmetrow, who seems to have put together ArticleHistory, advises that the field is undocumented, don't worry about it. pretend it isn't there. So, gacat notwithstanding, ArticleHistory tagged pages won't contribute to the categorization scheme that the GA template drives; they remain uncounted.

This is of concern, because, in time, we are to migrate GA tagged pages to ArticleHistory, and are sort of, kind of, asking people to use ArticleHistory with new pages. I suspect, if/when Gimmetrow's GimmieBot tool does most of the heavy lifting in this migration, it will simply ignore the topic field because ArticleHistory has no use for it. So what's the point of our effort with regard to topic? It seems to me, we have an upfront choice here, one that should be made Real Soon Now before much more work is done:
 * Ignore topic. Lose no sleep over the stuffed Uncategorized category. Concentrate on getting oldid set right so that GimmeBot can migrate GA tagged pages to ArticleHistory in the fullness of time (which, as a side effect, will also depopulate the Uncategorized category).
 * Decide that the categorization scheme that GA drives has long term usefulness, migrate its categorization logic to ArticleHistory, perhaps making gacat function exactly like GA's topic. so that when GimmeBot runs, it consumes the GA topic field and maps it to ArticleHistory gacat

If the latter, we should engage Gimmetrow and SandyGeorgia; ArticleHistory is more-or-less 'owned' by Feature Article classification schemes; one can't do anything with ArticleHistory without disturbing those classification schemes.

Discussion? — Gosgood 09:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I suppose that if those are the only two options, I'd go with that latter. Personally, I think the topic field is better than the gacat field in regard to the listed categories. With topic, it's the main categories from GA, unlike gacat. With that said, I'd really prefer option 3, altering ArticleHistory to take the top level categories as they are listed at WP:GA. Lara  Love  13:52, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with LaraLove here; the 11 topic categories also match exactly with what we use at WP:1.0, so I think it makes sense to use a common system. Walkerma 06:45, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Minor clarification of my point of view: Lara's option three is my option two. I don't propose using gacat field. I propose replacing gacat in AH with a field that implements GA topic. This proposal has scope outside of the Good Article project; the change needs to be coordinated with other AH users; mainly the Featured Article folk, from which AH has come. Take care. — Gosgood 10:22, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Add this to the examples of my dumbassery. Here's the problem, I'm blonde and I edit in the wee-hours of the morning when my chicken neck can barely keep my face from slamming into my keyboard. I should add a whole other list of milestones to my userpage for these sorts of situations. With that said, I amend my proposal for a third option to, instead, whole-heartedly support the fore-mentioned option two, which is the same thing. :) Lara  Love  06:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Main Problem
The main problem why there're so many uncategorized good articles is that it's not in the instructions! Perhaps a good way to avoid more uncategorized good articles from showing up is to include this in the instructions in good article process. OhanaUnited   Talk page   17:56, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Correct. Proposal:
 * Modify WP:GA top level headers (the eleven blue ones) so that the appropriate value of the GA topic field is present (i.e. 'Natural Sciences (Natsci)')
 * Concurrently modify step 2 of the Pass procedure to introduce readers to the topic field; tell them the correct value for this keyword follows from how they categorize articles at WP:GA.
 * Viewers visit WP:GA and categorize; once they categorize the article, have them scroll up to the top level blue banner for the appropriate value of the topic keyword.
 * The order of the Pass procedure changes somewhat; reviewers will need to do their WP:GA edits before posting on the talk page, so they know what value to put to the topic keyword.
 * Probably this could be simplified.


 * Further point. Asking reviewers to use AH, as we do on the contest page, is problematical. This template does not support GA's topic field; see discussion above; those pages will not go into any category that GA employs. They are "invisibly uncategorized" in that they are not even present in the uncategorized article page. Example: Talk:Prospect Park Zoo. Not categorized. Not on the uncategorized page either. I suggest deferring use of AH with the understanding that automation from the Featured Article project will eventually convert GA templates to corresponding AH templates. That automation cannot run at present because most GA templates do not have oldid set; further, the automation has no knowledge of the GA topic keyword either (because AH has no knowledge of it).


 * Not sure how to proceed with pages like Talk:Prospect Park Zoo. Putting both GA and AH templates on the page is silly; it makes for a really ugly page and the hilarity of marking a page 'good' twice. SandyGeorgia recommends that we use GA, fill it out properly, and have automation convert GA to AH; that makes more sense to me. My guess is, there about a thousand pages marked with AH — roughly, the difference between GA designated articles, minus the contents of the Uncategorized list; the properly set GA templates skew this a bit, but there are only very few of them. It was the use of AH, and its lack of support of topic, that originally motivated me to ask if we should maintain it in this cleanup at all (see above thread). It seems that consensus is to use topic; then we have problems with the present implementation of the AH template: it is producing "invisibly uncategorized" articles. Take care. — Gosgood 11:19, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Can they edit AH to use topic instead of gacat? That would solve everything. I'll make the proposal tomorrow. Lara  Love  06:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth (which is probably nothing since the instructions have already been added), I added this instruction a while ago, but it was either reverted, or there was in issue with what was being used (I think tl2 played up). Good to see it back now.  Giggy  UCP 06:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Why not use a bot?
If filling out this topic field is really supposed to be so helpful, it seems to me that a bot could do this task for us. All GA's are already listed under a specific heading on the main GA page, so all we have to do is figure out how each GA page category compares to topic= categories, and have a bot run through the GA list and tag each GA accordingly. Homestarmy 01:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Because that isn't fun, and is a lot easier to initiate. We wouldn't want that!   If anyone likes, I'll put in a WP:BOTREQ.  Giggy  UCP 02:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I wish I knew how to make a bot. That would be awesome. But I don't. The request is good, however we need to get this gacat, topic, AH situation sorted out first. Lara  Love  06:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Bot requested. I asked that whoever takes this on leave a note here, so here's hoping...  Giggy  UCP 06:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems fairly easy to me. Let me just clarify: The bot will basically just pull each article title from WP:GA, see what section it's under, and add a |topic parameter to GA or ArticleHistory on the article's talk page?  Is the |topic= a valid parameter for ArticleHistory, and are its editors aware of the change?  &mdash; Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 02:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

(<--)I'm not sure about ArticleHistory, but yes, for GA that's correct. I can't find a topic= parameter in ArticleHistory...so I'm not sure what the deal with that is. Anyway, that template also supports FA (etc.) and this will be limited to GA, so just leave it with GA for now. Giggy UCP 03:49, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I've requested (with the support of others here) that user:SandyGeorgia change the current ArticleHisory (AH) field from gacat (which accepts outdated, pointless categories) to the topic field used in GA. Apparently, s/he doesn't appreciate the callibur of editors at GA and can't be bothered to fix the mistakes of AH relating to GA.[1] For that reason, we continue with the project using GA. Can the bot be made to retrieve oldids aswell or just topic? Lara  Love  05:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * ArticleHistory doesn't support topic; see this discussion. Gimmetrow, judging from ArticleHistory's own history, appears to be closer to implementation details of AH than SandyGeorgia, and in navigating through talk page archives, saw that, as of last March, he was touching upon the relationship between GA topic and AH. See this discussion (immediately above We'll reach 2000 GAs soon). There, he reports that topic would be fairly straightforward to implement for AH, but was inquiring on the  form, as it would impact GimmeBot. He also had a hand in gacat implementation.
 * Unfortunately, Gimmetrow is taking a wikibreak for now, but claims to be returning Real Soon Now. I think he should be engaged in the discussion of AH supporting topic Indeed, I, for one, would not touch AH without consensus from him and SandyGeorgia, and general awareness among those who use AH as a feature article inventorying.
 * As for the 'mistake' of AH not supporting topic in the first place? Ummmm — I'm new here; haven't read all the talk pages, but I don't think we ever asked anyone to have AH support topic; can't call it a mistake if we never asked anyone for the keyword, or took the time to write a specification. If we had, but the specs were never implemented, then that's another story. My two cents... — Gosgood 14:28, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * When I refer to mistakes, I refer to the fact that the template wasn't originally created to support the various fields needed for each project. Don't get me wrong, my comments sound harsher than I intend them to, although SandyGeorgia's comments did put me off a bit. I appreciate the bot and realize that it, like everything on WP, has room for improvement. One such improvement is the addition of a topic field. Lara  ♥Love  05:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The good news is, SandyGeorgia aside, your reaching out has engaged good technical people; see this discussion. In particular, Gimmetrow is engaged, feels that the change is trivial, and won't break any pages. His confidence, I feel, will overcome objections from other people in the FA community. I believe, when the revised AH script is deployed, the "invisibly uncategorized" articles I have been commenting on in other threads will become categorized at Category:Uncategorized good articles. Be prepared for a big uptick there. Take care — Gosgood 09:38, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It looks like this task force will last longer than originally planned.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   12:41, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

So I'll go ahead and do this on GA templates, shall I, while waiting on word on ArticleHistory? &mdash; Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 13:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I've now fixed to take the "topic" parameter, so the bot can run on these as well. The parameter is now case insenstive, and accepts the full names of Good articles sections as well as the abbreviations. Geometry guy 15:17, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Geometry guy has enabled topic on ArticleHistory and Masem has observed the Big Uptick in Category:Uncategorized good articles (see below). The question I have is, did anyone mention to you the Big Can of Worms (I have it here in my other hand, and I'm about to dump it on your lap)? The Big Can of Worms is labeled oldid and it is the other parameter that participants in this task force are setting in this GA template remediation drive. Much of the work of this grind is finding an appropriate oldid value. For articles tagged with GA A Long Time Ago, this entails a bit of sleuthing; I would be very much surprised if you could devise a complete automation of that hunt. For the future, however, it may be possible for a daily-driven script to capture both topic and oldid in one go: the value for topic follows from where the GA Reviewer puts an article in WP:GA; the structure of that page implies eleven topic trees, you walk up the branches until you arrive at one of eleven roots; the name of that root is the name you want for topic. For oldid I think it is safe to say that it is the permanent ID of the current article version at the time the GA reviewer drops a new entry into WP:GA. It'll be either the version the viewer looked at, or a version very close. In my opinion, your output looks like a GA template that has both oldid and topic keywords set. I'm of the opinion that you don't have to write an ArticleHistory template output because there is automation around to remap properly set up GA templates into ArticleHistory templates (Gimmetrow's GimmeBot tool); I'm not sure there is consensus among other task force editors on this point; stay tuned for other comments. In my opinion, your automation will likely not be much help for draining the swamp in Category:Uncategorized good articles, with those, the article has been revised, perhaps as much as a thousand times since the GA template was put on the page, a few hundred times is typical, and finding the right oldid simply takes a bit of human-oriented sleuthing of talk and main space article histories. I'd be delighted if you prove me wrong, here. I think, for the world of the future perfect, a tool that would automagically populate the article talk pages with oldid  and topic endowed GA template for the daily additions to WP:GA page would be a decent tool to have. In effect, we wouldn't have to tell reviewers to fill out GA or ArticleHistory templates at all; just post decent reviews on the talk page and classify the article at WP:GA. My two cents. — Gosgood 15:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * As discussed below, there are tools to make the oldid search semi-automatic, but I don't think it can or should be done completely automatically, as there is a subjective judgement to be made: we do not, after all, want the oldid to link to a page that was vandalized moments after receiving GA status. I suggest that the bot goes ahead and fills in the topic: we can then make a category for articles with missing oldid, and go through this in a semiautomatic way. Geometry guy 12:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

✅ &mdash; Thank you for your patience. The bot categorized 1,149 articles in Category:Uncategorized good articles, and I got a couple it missed. There are 12 pages remaining in the category – all of the pages either aren't articles or they aren't listed on WP:GA (except for Talk:Shintō Musō-ryū, which I categorized, but for some ungodly reason it didn't work.)

Thanks! &mdash; Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 07:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * You are editing too fast and flooding my watchlist. El_C 08:09, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Great job! — Gosgood 11:25, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but I didn't really do anything! El_C 11:29, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Then consider it a random act of niceness. I'll also take a moment to thank Madman bum and angel. — Gosgood 11:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm going to give The da Vinci barnstar for his effort.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   14:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Why, thank you! I'm honoured. :) As for the bot editing too fast, by the time I posted that, it was already done.  It's a flagged bot, so the revisions don't show up in recent changes, which would be a problem.  It used maxlag = 5, a non-aggressive value.  The task took 1:41 to complete.  Cheers!  :) &mdash; Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 15:01, 3 August 2007 (UTC) It looks like this task force will last longer than originally planned.
 * Or not. Thanks, Madman bum and angel! Lara  ♥Love  15:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 1:41 as in hours or mins?  OhanaUnited    Talk page   16:45, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I was wondering the same thing but didn't want to ask because I thought it might be obvious. Lara  ♥Love  17:04, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It will be 1 hour 41 minutes: maxlag = 5 means that the bot won't edit if the servers are 5 seconds or more behind in executing their duties :) Typically, bots edit about 10 times per minute: since the bot made over 1000 edits, 100 minutes is par for the course. Geometry guy 12:38, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Question
I'm having some doubts about the categories. Many are very vague and some don't fit into the categories listed yet it's reasonable to have a category for those topics. For example, I don't know what Chris Bosh should fall into. OhanaUnited   Talk page   15:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Turns out there're many categories that aren't listed yet. I just found Sports category. It turns out there are many that aren't listed under the subcategory but they do exist.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   15:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * That may be part of what was the gacat field. The topic field lists the top 11 categories listed in GA. If you feel that those aren't sufficient to categorize the articles, then that's a suggestion that needs to be brought up on the talk page of WP:GA. The point of the topic field is to list where the article is listed at GA. Lara  Love  05:04, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Film with Arts and Media
I think there is an issue with the setup in regard to film articles. Another editor has been adding the "Arts" attribute to GA-class film articles, but the ensuing "good Arts article" link does not go to the right spot in the list at WP:GA. It goes to WP:GA, where there are no film articles; instead, the film articles reside at WP:GA. (Though at WP:GAC, it's a subsection under Arts.) This matter needs to be cleared up because the "good Arts article" does not go to the proper place in the WP:GA list for other film articles. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 13:37, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I am the "other editor." While I have since realized the films belong in "socsci", regardless, the concerns of Erik above are still valid.-- Esprit15d (talk ¤ contribs) 14:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming this is an issue with the coding of the GA template. I'll see what I can find out. Lara  Love  17:04, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, I misread this last night. The differences in the categories at GA and GAC never made sense to me. There should be a consistency between everything in the project. A task for someone else to take on, perhaps. Currently, I don't see an issue with the template or the task force. As pointed out by Espirit15d, for the purposes of this project, film articles should be categorized under SocSci. I'll see if I can find out why the categories are different at GAC than they are at GA. Lara  Love  17:49, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Another question
I'm definitely willing to help here, but I'm a bit confused. There's some articles appearing at Category:Uncategorized good articles that ARE categorized and appear at WP:GA, examples include Bruce Willis which has "socsci" (note case) for a topic, but still appears in the category. Others I've sorted disappear from this list immediately. Is the case important?

There's also the subcategories. Big Fish appears on the list, but already is noted as in the "Media" category. It's also already listed over at WP:GA appropriately. Is the category page going weird with this? --Masem 18:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Make sure you use the same case noted here. So "Socsci" as opposed to "socsci" - sad that the template doesn't recognise it, but what're you gonna do...  Giggy  UCP 22:19, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * There is another issue with Bruce Willis:  is not useful; I believe older versions of the Pass procedure were unclear; the procedure writer did not make clear that the   keyword should be given a numeric value, one representing the  permanent page identifier of the article upon which the review was based. (oldid). Readers of the procedure thought that the   keyword should simply be given the value  . Replacing 'nnnnnn' with useful data entails historical research of both the Talk page and main article histories, to figure out when the GA template was posted, then finding the version of the article that was current immediately before the GA tag was posted; we assume this was the version of the article reviewed. LaraLove posted the lookup technique on  the main taskforce page.
 * As for Big Fish, I'll run the risk of WP:BEAN with a somewhat techical comment. You may write anything you please after the  parameter, say, , and the current GA template script will dutifully render "…has been listed as a good Dumbarse article  under the…" (Sigh). The piece of the template code that chooses categories, however, does not have a choice for the value  , and places the article page in Category:Uncategorized good articles. The only correct choices for the   keyword remain the eleven values given in the table on the task force project page, in exactly the upper- and lower-case combination of letters shown in column one. This limited choice of values supports only a coarse 'top level' classification of articles; the more refined topic areas reflected on WP:GA are not supported by the GA template, and using one of the more refined topic areas such as 'Media' result in a unclassified article, though the wording of the rendered template suggests otherwise. Thanks for your help in this project; I hope this answers your question. Take care. — Gosgood 23:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, what he said :P Anyway, I fixed the oldid=nnnnnn in Bruce Willis, and in Big Fish it was already fixed.  Giggy  UCP 23:10, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yea, I figured out the case issue (also "topic" needs to be all lower case, won't work if it's "Topic"), and I've seen plenty of ones with lowercase topics which I've fixed. churn churn churn. --Masem 23:18, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I have fixed the case sensitivity: "topic" still needs to be in lower case, but "topic=SocSci" or "topic=math" will now work. Also, the template now accepts full names of topics as well as abbreviations. See also my comment in the next section. Geometry guy 15:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * PS. The new code also fixes the topic=Dumbarse problem mentioned above: invalid topic names are treated in the same way as a missing topic. Geometry guy 12:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Awwww geeee. And that was such an appealing bug to me. But thanks for the improvements to GA and AH. There are neat little features cropping up every day. Take care — Gosgood 12:01, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

ArticleHistory template updated - procedure same?
Noticed because a zillion more pages appeared in the uncatagorized list, but it looks like AH gained the topic parameter. Usage is same as GA. Only difference in procedure is that if there's an AH, one just needs to add "|topic=Correctcasetopic" as a parameter. I assume it's easy to bot-convert GAs to AHs from what I've read here, so it seems that if we see an GA template, we do what we've been doing, and if AH, do the other. --Masem 13:39, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Yep, topic parameter added to today by yours truly. I have also made the parameter case insensitive (both for ArticleHistory and for ), which I hope makes life easier for editors on this task force. The templates also expand the abbreviated topics to their full names, and link correctly to Good articles (the abbreviated names did not link correctly before). I think User:GimmeBot is already able to migrate topic data automatically from GA to ArticleHistory. If there are any problems with the templates, please let me know. Geometry guy 14:51, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * As I am the master of all that is awesome in the universe, I can't give you that title, but you're something close! :) Lara  ♥Love  15:51, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Right now I am thinking what happens when a GA with a topic paramemter gets promoted to FA. It seems like FA (Category:FA-Class articles) got a lot more categories than GA. Will the paramemter be nullified when it gets promoted?  OhanaUnited    Talk page   19:05, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * These are WikiProject categories, and are part of the Stub, Start, B, GA, A, FA scheme. GA has these categories as well, but they are different from the good article topics. The topic parameter is currently not used by featured articles and the ArticleHistory ignores the topic parameter for featured articles. This functionality could be added at a later date, so it is best to keep the parameter even though it not currently used. Geometry guy 12:57, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe stupid question
Ok, trying to fill in the oldid values helps with the posted monobook script, but there's articles that the addition is still hard. I can work through the talk page history and find out when the GA was added, but then cross-referencing that with the actual id of the page can be tricky especially with older and more hotly contested articles (eg: Crusades was a pain). Am I missing an obvious way or an existing script/tool that can let me take a talk page entry and grab the version of the article that last existed of that talk page entry? --Masem 15:46, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. That is a stupid question. NO! I'M JUST KIDDING! I don't know of any scripts, but I'm very manual about everything on WP. I just get the date that GA was posted to the talk page, go to article history and find the last edit from that date and get the oldid from the url. Lara  ♥Love  15:49, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I posted the link to Dr pda's tool early this AM. It will help in some, but not all cases, and only in talk page searches for GA postings: On talk page histories, it tries to find some hint of an editor announcing "GA passed" or "GA" or "Congratulations on your Brand-Spanking New Good Article!!!". It can go through only so many permutations and combinations before it gives up, and, in any case, if an editor posts a GA template on a talk page without making any edit summary statement whatsoever, Dr pda's tool won't find it. And, sad to say, you're not missing any magic: matching up the corresponding main space article -- the likely one that a GA reviewer looked at -- with the point in time that the GA template was posted on the talk page is just plain manual sleuthing. Dr pda is speeding up my work, making the first talk page search faster, but there are still articles that I just have to slog through the darn histories. Sorry. Take care and thank you for helping out! — Gosgood 16:30, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I've been meaning to strike this. It actually helps a good deal and is now pretty much my mainstay article/talk snooping tool. I'd recommend it to anyone on this project, and you can't beat the price. Take care. — Gosgood 12:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Yea, definitely. I use this, Navigation popups and using Firefox tabs wisely (with the category list and with WP:GA always up) to burn through these pretty quickly.  --Masem 12:50, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Dr pda here. Actually there is some magic. Clicking on the word (oldid) in the output of the script gives you the oldid of the article page at the time of the corresponding edit summary on the talk page. For example, running the script for A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. produces

(last entry read: 2006-07-28, 11:34:02 ) Click here to enter a date manually
 * 2007-02-12, 03:33:22 GA passed (oldid)
 * 2007-02-11, 08:06:04 GA nomination on hold (oldid)
 * 2007-02-07, 04:50:14 adding GA nominee (oldid)

If you click on the word oldid in the first line (since that corresponds to when the GA was passed which is what you want) the output becomes and indeed is the version of the article at 03:20, 12 February 2007. Apologies if you already knew the above, however there is more magic. If you have had to hunt through the history to find the date when the GA template was applied, you can use the "Click here to enter a date manually" link to get the oldid. If you click on that line in the script output it should bring up a pop-up window (assuming your javascript settings allow it), enter a date in here and you will get a result like (e.g. typing in 12 February 2006 for the Higginbotham article)
 * 2007-02-12, 03:33:22 GA passed 107474703

The last version before 2007-02-12, 23:59:59 was at 2007-02-12, 03:20:22, with an oldid of 107474703. Click on the links to jump to the article history or talk page history at this point.

(the words article history and talk page history are actually proper links, I just can't copy them). Hope this helps, Dr pda 17:08, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Two more notes

 * 1) Found Appalachian School of Law which has both a GA and a AH template; the AH template lacks the GA entry, and the GA is not correct which is why it's appearing. I'm assuming that in cases like this and when we find any AH lacking a GAN entry that it would help to fill it in, just as we do with the GA oldid.  But more specific, I assume that AH is preferred over GA, and that I should remove the GA template once I entry a GAN entry into the AH?
 * 2) The GA template now creates Category:Good articles without an oldid thanks to Geometry guy. This list probably has a lot of overlap with the current uncategorized list, but there's definitely some that exist on this list that are categorized.  I wouldn't recommend touching it until we've cleared the uncategorized stuff but it wouldn't seem to be a hard extension to transfer our efforts to empty the lack-oldid list once we've cleared the uncategorized one (by 2015 *grin*)...--Masem 20:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * AH is preferred over GA if you know how to fill it in without creating errors. Otherwise, the custodians of that template (mostly SandyGeorgia) prefer that GA be used and a request submitted for Gimmebot to transfer the data to AH.
 * I think transferring our attentions to articles without oldids is a fine idea once this backlog elimination is complete. The task force will remain to keep the uncategorized list at zero, but once the backlog is gone (sometime around 2015, as you noted), we can get the no oldid list down. It shouldn't be too long, however, as many will be taken care of in the process of categorizing (also as you noted). Lara  ♥Love  06:01, 28 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't worry about that article. I just update it and removed GA.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   10:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Authoritative source for setting 'topic' parameter is WP:GA, no?
Forgive me if I seem a bit overbearing on this, but we are in general agreement that the source of our topic settings stems from the placement of the article in the WP:GA page? I came across an editor who works on articles concerning the roads of Pennsylvania and who changed one of my topic settings from  (where roads live at WP:GA) to   because (1) that seemed a good choice for a small road in Pennsylvania, and (2) that's how he saw it was set on an article on a similar Pennsylvanian road, via an UCGA-related edit by a member of this august task force. I trust such a topic setting was a mistake, but if, in contrast, editors are not referring to WP:GA for their topic data, and are, instead, making topic judgements on the fly, then I'm afraid we're creating a bit of confusion that might require another task force to straighten out. We should be making topic judgements only in the case where we've encountered a GA that is missing from WP:GA, and in that case, should classify the missing article in a manner similar to that of related articles,and then adding the missing article to the WP:GA listing. We are clear on this, aren't we?

This argues for seeking out automation for this particular chore, as advanced above. Quite apart from my concern, this is an error-prone process; I've certainly made some errors (and I think I've gotten them all). Take care — Gosgood 22:53, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The point is that the topic field match the category that the article is listed on at WP:GA. When you click the link on the GA or AH template, it takes you to that category at WP:GA. It's pointless if the article isn't listed there. If the custodian(s) of any particular article don't agree with where the article is listed, they need to move it to a different category on the GA list. Lara  ♥Love  05:01, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Is there any formal procedure for moving a GA from one category to another if the page maintainers don't like it, or do they just move it on WP:GA and update the category? I just got a comment from someone that I had categorized their page and they felt it was weird.  Knowing about the category breakdown, I don't believe it is, but in case I hit another case where the user thinks it's wrong, I want to know if there's a proper move procedure for this. --Masem 20:22, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The only formalism I would suggest would be for custodians to propose their category changes at the article review queue. If the recategorization proposal makes sense to reviewers as well, then a member of this task force can ensure the transition happens at WP:GA and in the talk page template in an orderly way. My 2¢ Take care — Gosgood 13:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

(←) Once the drive is over, I propose that we standardize the categories at WP:GA and WP:GAC. I prefer the breakdown at GAC, but I think it would be easiest to keep the GAs where they are listed, and transform GAC categories to match GA. Subcategories, to be more specific. That way, wherever the article is nominated, it is so listed (upon passing, of course). Any objections? Although this is not the official proposal, I do appreciate comments. Lara ♥Love  05:55, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Quick comment - often the reviewer will know the categories much better than the nominator, so I don't think the reviewer's choice of category & subcategory should be tied by the (possibly erroneous) choice of the nominator. Walkerma 06:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good point, but there would be no requirement that the article have to be listed in the same cat as nominated. It would simply end that confusion when an article was nominated in the appropriate category which doesn't exist on the GA list. Lara  ♥Love  17:02, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Home stretch!
Come on guys! We're almost there! Backlog tag removed by the way :) Giggy  Talk 07:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yippie! MadmanBot cleared the decks! Now it's just the missing oldids — Gosgood 11:31, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Time to check if pages are actually "fit" to be a GA. I ran into numerous articles that lack GA reviews. I ask people to look for GA review at the same time, it's a quick test to see if some editors just randomly promote articles (not to mention that I found some of these promotions are the works of admins.....)  OhanaUnited    Talk page   15:52, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Wasn't there a big point (I'm guessing mid-2006, before I got really involved in WP) where the GA process significantly changed? From searching the oldids, I've seen articles where there's obviously someone outside the normal editors reviewed and GA'd it without the formality we now have of the GAReview tag.  Plus, there was a drive sometime after this point to review all current GA articles to re-evaluate them because the process became formalized.  I'm just trying to figure out what I should be watching for in the histories for this (I've caught a couple that were definitely fishy where the GA came from, usually an anon IP adding it.) --Masem 16:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

(←) Many articles were promoted before there was any criteria. If an editor saw an article and thought it was good, it was so tagged. There was a drive that was supposed to ensure all tagged GAs were reviewed and either brought up to those new standards or delisted, however, MANY fell through the cracks and end up at WP:GA/R in a steady flow.

If anyone is interested, we can now shift our attentions and move the task force to WikiProject GA quality task force or something like that. We can ensure that all GAs meet the standards and include the oldid to easily identify what version was deemed to be GA. Comments? Lara ♥Love  16:18, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Let's wait for backlog elimination drive to close (on August 12) then we can have a review-mania where we'll bring the whole community's attention and get everything reviewed.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   16:45, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a plan. Another issue that comes up is the differences between the subcategories at WP:GA differing from those at WP:GAC. What do you think about standardizing those? Lara  ♥Love  17:00, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the classification on all pages (participant tables, good article candidate, good article) ought to be the same, at least at the top-level 11 topic breakdown established on WP:GA. Then reviewers will already know how to fill out the  field, should they pass an article.
 * As for next goals, I would like to see many of the old, pre-April 2006 Good Articles that had been simply granted the marque en passant to be formally reviewed. I have already left some cautionary notices around to give editors warning, but wasn't sure of further procedures. The end state, though, would be to have every article with a GA marque to be based on an independent review. That would eliminate a double-standard that has been around for quite some time now. Procedurally, would this work: (1) Post an advisory (2) List at WP:GA/R for disposition consensus (3a) re-review for those that seem good or near good, or (3b) delist for articles that are significantly at variance with the standard. Would this swamp GA/R? Do we spread these remediation reviews over time? Take care — Gosgood 20:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I would almost say that before doing a mass GA/R process, we need to get the GA's converted to AHs, as to accomdate all the GARs that will come up during the process. --Masem 01:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea. Should we start another task force or use this one?  OhanaUnited    Talk page   06:14, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * This *should* be bot-able? (The only thing to add is the date which proper oldid's should supply), I think it's not so much a need for a task force, just asking another bot request. --Masem 12:24, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

(←)GA/R cannot handle any sort of influx of articles without additional participation. I've done everything short of whoring myself off (okay, not really, but it seemed like it might help make my point) to get editors involved. I think the mass advertising might be starting to work now, but it's really too early to tell. There are so many changes I think need to be made, but I think these are a good start. What about the creation of another bot like Gimmebot? (We can name it Larabot ;) ... or not. Just an idea.) That would help considering Gimmebot only runs on request. Lara  ♥Love  06:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think what'll happen is that I'm finding that more of the articles without oldid are ones likely to not have gone through a formal review/may have problems/etc. (It's not a guarantee, however). Since the oldid step cannot be automated (unless one can run a bot to find when a GA tag is added in a diff between pages), this will not fill GA/R at a fast rate.  Alternatively, maybe make a special sub-page of GA/R, a list of articles we find in oldid-filling that are questionable, but don't spend the time to write up a full description, then in another task force (GA quality control), point to those as the first ones to be reviewed. --Masem 12:24, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Quick note that thanks to Geometry Guy, we now have Category:Good articles with no article history action which is equivalent to GA's lacking oldid's for those articles using AH. The list is (presently, but I don't think it'll grow) much smaller than the GA's without oldids. --Masem 12:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, I think we need to figure out what to do between this and GA/R. I just ran through the E's on the lack-oldid list, and of 8 of the articles at least 5 of them were less-than-GA, all of them with a GA put in pre-mid-2006.  However, I looked at the pages, and those that were just needed some relatively easy corrections to make them stay GA.  As to not flood GA/R, I put a comment on each such page that they should tidy up some things but I wasn't listing them presently for a GA/R.
 * My thought here is:
 * At some point RSN, we (WP community at large) are going to have a GA/R drive, to re-review every GA presently there, based on the above discussion. If that's not the case, I strong encourage that we need to have a GA/R drive for every article with a GA before mid-2006.  Thus, we could just ignore trying to access the GA and just fill in the oldid (as to let a GA->AH bot run), and then initiate the rereview.  This allows us to "speedily" process the oldids, and then come back to worry about quality.
 * We could just make a subpage of articles (here or under GA/R) that we list questionable pages when we add the oldid, and then have a drive/task force to remove those. This takes a bit longer, but the quality of the article as a GA should be quickly appraised ("-ref, +POV" instead of fully spelling out every problem) so that the task force to review them knows where to look.
 * We could list every problem page at GA/R and help to initiate a backlog drive to help clear it out.
 * My personal preference is the first option as it separates the tasks (syntax verses quality control), and I think you'll likely get more people willing to help with quality control than with nitty details like oldid. --Masem 14:06, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Right now we are presented with 2 things. 1 is switching GA to AH. Another is GAR. It's time to change the instruction in GAC so that talk pages using GA won't appear anymore.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   14:33, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, my rundown on things. When you come upon an article that clearly does not meet the standards (particularly those tagged before criteria were put into place), be bold and delist. We don't much care for these type of nominations at GA/R and they frequently get snowball delisted. To save time and effort, just drop a line on the talk page for articles that are only failing in one area and could reasonably be brought up to standards quickly. Check back for progress and only delist if there is none. For articles that stand little hope of quick improvement, be bold.
 * As far as instructions for GA - AH, talk to User:SandyGeorgia about that first. She repairs user errors in filling out AH and may prefer that it remain a bot action. If Gimmebot can't keep up or whatever, as I previously suggested, we can get another bot to take care of it. One that watches for new GAs and transfers them to AH.
 * Lastly, it's sooooo good to see Geometry guy dropping in during his wikibreak to help out so much so quickly! Lara  ♥Love  04:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Hey, thank me for being so productive during my vacation. Are we going to use the existing running total or make a new one? As for delisting articles, drop a note in the talk page stating that it has been delisted because it was promoted prior to the implementation of GA criteria and it doesn't meet up to today's GA standard.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   05:45, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for being so productive on your vacation!! :D
 * Keep current running totals.
 * Here is an example of what an appropriate talk page message would be for a delisted article. This is not necessarily a standard to go by, but it may possibly give some of you an idea of what to write. Lara  ♥Love  05:58, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Just hope people won't be upset that # of GA decreased drammatically over August.  OhanaUnited    Talk page   18:14, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I've removed Category:Good articles with no article history action from ArticleHistory and added this error to the ArticleHistory error category. No need to have extra categories for this one issue. Gimmetrow 03:45, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * While going through articles without oldid, I came upon few articles that are promoted prior to GA review process and they still remain in good GA quality in my opinion. So what should we do? Create a new GA review and use the date of review for oldid? Or the date when the article got tagged as GA?  OhanaUnited    Talk page   13:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I've been using the original GA date, despite the fact that it was before a more peer-based process was in place. Technically, you're doing a GAR (albeit a less formal GAR) which is a different entry on the ArticleHistory template so it would make sense to not confuse the matter. Also, when we do this en masse GA review, we'd still probably want to id all GA's put in before 2007 to give them extra consideration over those within this year. --Masem 14:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I use the date the GA was tagged when there was no review. Lara  ♥Love  15:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * And don't use actionlink?  OhanaUnited    Talk page   15:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Only use the action link when there is a review to link to. Lara  ♥Love  16:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I noticed there's a huge difference between GA number and the number of GA posted on WP:GA. Something must be wrong. OhanaUnited   Talk page   15:08, 8 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I know when I was categorizing GAs I maybe came across 1 or 2 that weren't on the list, so I don't believe it's necessary from us - I think there's just people doing GAs that aren't following procedures (I've seen some late July that just use .   I believe there really needs to be a two-pronged drive for GAs that does:


 * 1) Reverify the article is GA (from Category:Wikipedia good articles, drop into GA/R if any question
 * 2) (Re)Categorize as needed...
 * 3) Run though Category:Delisted good articles to remove any here that may still be on the WP:GA page.

Of course, before we do that, I think we want to do: --Masem 16:23, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Finish off the oldids missing from GA articles. We're done to 69 as when I last checked this morning, we should be able to clear this today.  That clears out the purpose of this task force (Yay!)
 * 2) Let (er..) Gimmebot? run through all articles with GA templates and convert them to AH
 * 3) Remove GA from the face of WP in favor of AH, make sure all GA promoters are well aware of the new way to do articles.
 * 4) THEN do this process so that we start the AH tracking that is needed.

NotactualGA=Yes
What is that? Why are there GA templates on user pages with a "notacutalga" field filled as yes. What's the point? Lara ♥Love  15:48, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The purpose of "notactualGA" is to indicate good articles which are not GA-class on the WP1.0 scale. This should mean they are actually A-Class, although there could be some exceptions. Geometry guy 12:26, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * So then it is not appropriate usage to have this template on a user page or user talk page? Because such uses are coming up on the uncategorized list and I'd like to remove them. Lara  ♥Love  04:37, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Ha! I was completely wrong about the original purpose for this parameter: User:Kmarinas86 introduced it precisely for the purpose of ensuring that User and Wikipedia pages did not get categorized. However, in the template, the programming was incorrect, because the template added the categories in two separate places, and Kmarinas86 only programmed out the categories in one of these two places. Consequently, when I tidied up the template last month, I misinterpreted the original purpose, and used the parameter to remove only Category:GA-Class Good articles and Category:Wikipedia CD Selection-GAs.
 * The parameter therefore now does what I said above, but that was not its original purpose. I believe a parameter is needed to separate out A-Class good articles, but "notactualGA" is a very bad name for it! Also, I was wrong about another thing: the badly named Category:Wikipedia CD Selection-GAs is not about GA-Class, but about Good articles, so this should be present on A-Class articles too.
 * A quick glance at the list of categories at the bottom of Templates used for featured content shows that the issue of templates on non-(article talk) pages is in a bit of a mess at the moment. Since this is partly my fault, I will continue my wiki-anti-break, and try to fix it this pm, and will report later. Geometry guy 11:44, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I have now deprecated this parameter and replaced it by a test for the of the article. Users should be free to test templates on their User and User talk pages. Also templates are listed on certain Wikipedia pages. The namespace test now means that only article talk pages get categorized, not these other occurences.
 * The question of A-Class good articles is a matter for WP 1.0 people to decide, so I have done nothing about it. Geometry guy 14:11, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

omg its done...
Both uncategorized GAs and GAs without oldids are now completely empty. AH's without GANs was taken care of already, apparently. Could this mean this task force is done?... --Masem 00:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * OMG! /wrists - now we have no purpose :P  Actually, well done everyone! - But we still need to keep an eye on the cats, not every editor will add the topic parameter.  So we still keep the task force alive :D  Giggy  Talk 00:07, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh yea, I know until we ween people off GA and onto AH, and educate everyone, people will still be misapplying. I had to clear 3 out of the original uncat-GA category just before I posted, all for various reasons. --Masem 00:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Maintaining the categories will be an ongoing task. Lara  ♥Love  03:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I propose this task force be merged into the newly created, broader Project quality task force. Lara ♥Love  06:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Support - Naturally obvious at least to me. --Masem 13:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Support I was beginning to think there were too many sub-projects in GA anyways.--Jayron32| talk | contribs 06:29, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, if these two are merged, there will only be three, one of which has only the creating editor on the participants list. I'm not sure what to do with that one. Lara  ♥Love  06:31, 10 August 2007 (UTC)