Wikipedia talk:Content review/workshop

Radical streamlining?

I don't quite see how that description fits this. And I don't really see the point of this to begin with -- not to say that there is no point, just that I don't understand it. You may want to offer some additional rationale at the top of this talk page, especially with regard to how this process compares with "good article" nominations.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 10:08, 10/1/2007

Ah, sorry. Insofar as it might supplant GA it's radical streamlining. Marskell 12:04, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

This idea seems rather stupid, IMHO. The last thing we need is a fourth "review" option out there. I just read something over at WT:FAC last night about the backlog there being much higher than it was, and many of those regulars are seeing a decrease in FAC reviewers as well. So I think the biggest problem that plagues all of the existing review avenues (WP:FAC, WP:PR, and WP:GAN) is a general lack of editors interested in reviewing articles. So adding a fourth review option out there isn't going to help; all that's going to do is to suck more reviewers away from the three areas that we currently have.

Infighting amongst FA & GA isn't going to help this, either. FA isn't going anywhere, and neither is GA. The two camps need to come together and find some common agreement in the middle, and decide how best to fix the greater issue of article review on wikipedia, and decide how PR fits into the picture as well. Dr. Cash 19:08, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

No more review options, I agree. A.Z. 00:52, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Guys, I said insofar as it might supplant GA. No, of course, simply starting a third structure doesn't make sense. Call it "back to GA's roots", if you like. Marskell 11:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Good articles

How does this idea differ significantly from WP:GA? There is no point having a new process almost identical to an existing one. If you have ideas to improve GA, then suggest them over there, but starting a new process is a bad idea. --Tango 21:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually...

I'm changing my vote somewhat. I do see a benefit to something like this. GA seems to be a very strenuous standard to live up to (especially for a standard named "good" rather than "great" or "outstanding"). There are plenty of articles that are generally trusted and accepted as having good information, yet don't meet the GA standard because of some formatting, less-than-great writing, or other pedantic issues that really don't matter all that much when you consider what it takes for an article to just be useful.

Marskell, if you want people to accept this, I would first of all remove the template format from the page. Also post a sample of the tag you'd like used for nominating articles -- and make it something rather lean and nondescript. I'd also try and word the page a bit more simply, and give some more rationale with emphasis on contrasting this with GA and FA. Perhaps something along the lines of this being an intermediate step between "nothing" and GA -- although that's just a suggestion.

Equazcion • argue/improves • 04:39, 10/2/2007

General review

General review The General review is intended to encourage and identify competent content with a minimum of bureaucracy. It has no subsidiary pages outside of template space. If an editor feels that they have updated a page to the point that a general reader would be reasonably satisfied with the coverage, they may nominate in one of the categories below. The article should not neglect major aspects of a topic, have sound prose, and cite its sources. Nominations need only a blue link and a summary sentence. Any editor may choose an article from the list: remove it from this page, start an article talk thread, and leave a user talk note with the nominator. Reviewers are encouraged to edit the article directly if they see room for improvement. Once the reviewer and nominator are both confident that the coverage is competent, the successful General review template may be placed at the top of article talk. The template should be linked to the thread where the review took place. Where an editor finds a page that has passed General review but feels the coverage dissatisfying, they may reiniate the process: start a thread, leave a user talk note, and attempt to improve the content. If this fails, the template may be removed. Currently there #### that have passed General review. There is no canonical list. Ideally, every article on Wikipedia will one day be able to pass General review.

Moved to talk to make way for general workhop.

Name

Per all of the talking here I've moved this to a more general title. Content review/workshop might be quibbled over but I think it sufficiently generalized. Marskell 13:03, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Fuck, my fuckin' head is totally spinning.............aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrghhhhhhhhhhhhh

But seriously, I'll try to add some ideas to the page here.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:09, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

PR cons

To this I'd add: "Participation is so low many submitted articles don't get any review. This has caused many editors to abandon PR altogether, causing some to use FAC as a substitute.". As currently written, the PR con list hints at this but doesn't actually say it.Rlevse 13:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, last time I looked, this is wikipedia, and "everyone can edit", so why don't you add it to the list? Dr. Cash 05:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Approach

After some discussions with Marskell (visible on our respective talk pages, if anyone is interested), I would like to try adding some additional material to the top of the workshop page, with the goal of laying out a roadmap that tries to avoid some of the problems FA/GA/PR discussions have had. I hope it will be self-explanatory what I'm trying to do. A brief summary is that I'd like to start by getting folks to agree on goals and scope, and then work from there to identifying specific improvements that can be made. There are some risks in this approach -- for example it's easy to make the scope too big, and easy to try to come up with ideas that will fix everything in one go. However, if we can avoid those pitfalls, I think the benefit of working from goals first is that we might get some common understanding of what we're trying to accomplish, and build some trust among the participants in order to avoid the sense of "drive-by commentary".

I also am not particularly keen to advertise this page widely until we have some evidence that it's going to be useful. These are contentious topics; I know we already have some habitues of GA and FA here, and if we see things starting to gel I suggest we post some notices to attract more attention at that point. Right now, I feel like this is a workshop which needs to work, rather than be examined for effectiveness. Obviously we should be glad of anybody who stops by and contributes, but I think we might be better off for a few days at least if we see what progress we can make before asking for validation. Mike Christie (talk) 21:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Query on recent edit

Malleus Fatuarum just changed "Produce well-written articles with accurate, complete, and neutral content" to ". . . broad, and neutral content", with the edit summary "Scope creep". Could we get a bit more explanation? I'm not sure I disagree with the change, but I don't really understand the edit summary. Mike Christie (talk) 13:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I meant that the goal posts for GA seem to be changing. WP:WIAGA says that good articles are broad in their coverage, not complete, or comprehensive, as required for FA. So the scope of GA seemed to be overlapping with FA, hence scope creep. --Malleus Fatuarum 14:04, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Just gonna free form riff on some ideas here:

So here's some ideas that are running through my head (after one beer to clear up the cobwebs):

• A centralized review page, which will supplant GA. It will basically BE the GA page, and act as the gate-keeper for the FA page. Essentially, a single reviewer will look at the page, compare it to WP:WIAGA standards, and make one of three decisions:
  • Article is below GA standard: Reviewer leaves a detailed review on the talk page, listing fixes needed to make a GA. They needed list EVERY grammar error, nor every single uncited sentance, but ideally they should leave enough information that those that are taking care of the article can fix it.
  • Article is at GA standard but below FA standard: Reviewer adds the article to the GA list, but also lists places where they believe the article will need to be fixed to reach FA standard, as above.
  • Article is likely FA standard: Reviewer adds the article to both the GA list AND the FAC page, with a link to the user that originally nominated the article (The original nominator is expected to shepherd the article through the entire review process and see that requested fixes are made themselves). FA continues as normal.
• If we do anything with Peer Review, we should somehow combine it with the GAR/FAR/FARC processes. A sort of centralized open comment page, perhaps with several sections:
  • Requests for general review
  • Requests for reassessment for articles that may be over-ranked (optional for GA, required for FA)
  • If an article fails GA but the original nominator thinks it should have passed, they should bring it for general review.

Upsides of this process:

• Reduction of WP:SNOW-bad nominations at FAC
• Largely keeps the same structure we have had so far
• Gives PR a raison d'etre, which it seems to lack
• Organized and orderly, and every process has a clearly defined role in improving articles.

Downsides of this process:

• Cultural inertia (the FA regulars are sure to resent the GA as the gatekeeper for its process)
• Extra levels of beurocracy and process
• A backlog at one place can bottleneck the process
• May be too complicated and may discourage people from nominating at all (unless we leave the grunt work to the reviewers... The nominators role should be the initial request for the review, and to make any requested fixes. The rest should be up to the reviewers).

Any comments?--Jayron32|talk|contribs 01:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

"A centralized review page, which will supplant GA. It will basically BE the GA page, and act as the gate-keeper for the FA page." I think the proposal fell at the first hurdle. --Malleus Fatuarum 01:58, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Care to elaborate?--Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

You said it yourself: "the FA regulars are sure to resent the GA as the gatekeeper for its process". Surely where the GA process scores over the FA process is in encouraging editors to strive for a standard that isn't perceived as being beyond the reach of mere mortals? That's got nothing to do with being any kind of gatekeeper for FA. If FA wants to make FAC nomination contingent on an article already having achieved GA, that's a matter for FA, doesn't mean that anything has to be changed here. --Malleus Fatuarum 13:55, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

This seems like it would add far to much bureaucracy to the review process as a whole, and would just confuse things. I'm also not real crazy about the "gatekeeper" idea, either -- I don't think we want to depend too much one any one particular volunteer, and the process should spread the administrative burden a bit wider. If one person is "in charge" of it, and that person leaves (voluntarily or involuntarily), the process is broken until that person is replaced. We also don't want too many "Rauls" running around (part of FAs problem is that Raul overall has too much responsibility and power, and it would help to spread that out a little bit). Dr. Cash 02:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

You completely misunderstood. The entire process is still anti-beurocratic. By a single editor, I meant that the "gatekeeper" page will work EXACTLY, and IN EVERY WAY as GA works now, in the sense that only one editor does EACH review (not one editor doing ALL the reviews). Its not a Raul-like pre-FA czar, it just a statement of how GA works now: A single editor reads an article, compares it to WP:WIAGA and decides to promote or fail, it's a WP:BOLD process rather than a WP:CONSENSUS process. It is a way to integrate the GA into a more unified review process.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok thanks for clarifying that. But now, your idea sounds even dumber than before, and just as bureaucratic and confusing. Dr. Cash 02:53, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that Jayron's suggestion, reduced to its essense, is rather simple. In fact it is just one addition to current process: if a GA reviewer is particularly impressed by an article they are reviewing, then they should be encouraged to nominate it at FAC after completing their review. That doesn't sound dumb to me, and it certainly isn't bureaucratic. Two benefits: nomination by reviewer helps to break down the adversarial "reviewers vs nominators" system; it may help to generate some goodwill if GA feeds FAC with its best articles.

However, forget all talk of "gatekeepers": that aspect of the idea won't work at all. Geometry guy 14:22, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

If that's what the idea amounts to, then I doubt that it would have very much practical impact. I don't know what the figures are, perhaps someone does, but I doubt that many articles get through a GA review without requiring some attention even to get to that standard. But more importantly, I think that a successful FA nomination (or a GA nomination for that matter) requires the commitment of at least one editor knowledgeable about the subject matter, to deal with the inevitable issues raised during the review. So whoever nominates the article really ought to be one of those prepared to see the process through, not some disinterested GA reviewer. --Malleus Fatuarum 15:17, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, part of my point is that the nominator would be disinterested. One of the problems with FAC, in my view, is that it is too adversarial: the nominator is passionate about the article, and other reviewers effectively say "if you want your article to be FA, dance for me". The focus should really be on the article, i.e., "this article is close to FA standard, lets see if we can get it there". Geometry guy 16:41, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you give the game away when you say " ... let's see if we can get it there". FA reviewers don't work on the articles, they offer criticism of them; I think I remember one explaining that recently by saying that his "footprint" was bigger that way. It's an inherently adversarial process that requires a committed editor to see it through. Without structural changes to the way FA works, this proposal would simply lead to orphaned articles nominated by disinterested GA reviewers languishing until the FA director thinks that enough time has passed before failing them because the issues raised during the review hadn't been addressed. --Malleus Fatuarum 16:55, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

"...if you want your article to be FA, dance for me" is rather odd. (I thought I was the one trading in histrionics?) Jay's ideas aren't entirely without merit. Perhaps the reviewer could compare to the WIAFA page and add to GA if it's close, noting "recommend FAC." Marskell 18:50, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Would you also be expecting the nominating GA reviewer to deal with the issues that would come up in the FA review? It seems to me that perhaps one of the things that GA and FA have in common is that both review processes rely on the participation of committed editors. Which a disinterested GA reviewer would very likely not be. --Malleus Fatuarum 19:06, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I can do histrionics too - hey, it's fun! No, I would not be expecting nominators to deal with issues. I really would like to see a change in culture at review processes. I think reviewers could be a lot more proactive than they currently are (here I should applaud the many reviewers who fix problems with articles). I like Marskell's "recommend FAC". It is amazing how a little idea can make a big impact. Geometry guy 19:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

If your proposal has now become that reviewers should roll their sleeves up and get stuck into improving the article instead of being content to simply criticise it, then I think that already happens to a significant degree with the GA process; the culture of FA is quite different though. But the point you're not addressing is the need for a committed (and did I say knowledgeable yet?) editor to be involved. --Malleus Fatuarum 19:51, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

People roll up their sleeves at both. The question is volume of reviewers—that's an issue at every process and has no perfect answer. Marskell 20:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

People roll up their sleeves in the company of a committed editor who is knowledgeable about the subject. Even with that committed editor, the review process too often degenerates into an exercise in English grammar. But I've stated my point, I've got nothing else to add to what I've already said. --Malleus Fatuarum 20:22, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

What about two streams?

Assuming it's not rejected, the single reviewer says "Good short article" (too short to be FA—end of the line) or "recommend FAC". The latter would essentially be a queue. Perhaps PR becomes involved then. Marskell 19:46, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I want to be clear that I am not wedded to any idea I spelled out above. From my point of view, there is one major problem with the way articles are reviewed at Wikipedia, and that is the disjointed nature of the review system. Maybe I can refocus this by explaining the problems my above proposal was trying to solve:

• Problem 1) There are no less than 4 review processes that are at work at Wikipedia, and there is little coordination between them. FA, GA, PR, and the stub/start/B/A system are all handled in different ways by different groups of editors and serve different purposes. Wikipedia should have a centralized review system, the goal of which is to provide critical review that causes editors to improve articles to FA status.
• Problem 2) Peer Review is WAY underutilized. Anyone who has spent enough time around this process is familiar with the dreaded FA-PR loop of death. An FAC fails with numerous notes to complete a Peer Review before the next nomination. The Peer Review languishes for a month receiving little or no attention. The article is renominated, unfixed at FA. Rinse and repeat.
• Problem 3) There is a wide difference of opinion on the purpose of each of these processes. Some people nominate their articles for a "rubber stamp" endorsement of their work. We have all seen it where a nominator exhausts huge amounts of energy trying to explain why they shouldn't have to provide inline cites, neededn't clean up their prose, or explain away EVERY objection to their article with "the page you say I should follow is only a guideline, so I should be able to ignore it" or the like. Even between the processes, there is a lot of animosity. Many editors feel that FA is arbitrarily tied to the more esoteric and technical aspect of the MOS (We have all seen FAC's being opposed for having a misused endash or an improperly wikified date), while many other editors feel that GA is a redundant process or that it is to heavily dependant on the opinion of single editors. Likewise, the project level review system can be inconsistantly applied between projects; what one project calls A-class may be B-class in another project. If we had a single reviewing system, with a single set of standards, it would reduce a LOT of these problems.
• Problem 4) What I call "cultural inertia" above. In a perfect world, we would devise a new process that replaces everything we have, it would be logical and simple and work well. Even if we take for granted that such a process exists, there is often so much emotional baggage in the processes now that even if EVERYONE AGREES the current system needs fixing, NO ONE CAN AGREE that their part of the system should be scrapped or modified for the new system. Unless we can overcome this last part, this whole idea is doomed from the start.

There it is... Any ideas? --Jayron32|talk|contribs 23:57, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

If all these processes are in their own way improving the standard of articles on wikipedia, which I've got no reason to doubt that they are, then I don't see the problem. I really can't see any reason to replace the present matrix system of assessment with a heirarchical one. In fact I can even see some advantages in the present matrix system. FA is different from the rest only insofar as it's publicly recognised by a little star in the top right corner of an article; but so what? --Malleus Fatuarum 01:09, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

That's a fair question. I will return it with another question; does the current system work well enough or could it work better as a more organized system? I mean, the current system works to a point, but could it work better if it were better organized? Is good enough, well, good enough or can we do better? --Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:52, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Anything can be done better. You ask: "does the current system work well enough ...", the answer to which must be "who knows"? What does "better" mean? What are the goals of the current system? Which of the current processes leads to the greatest improvement in the quality of articles on wikipedia? How would the success of any new process be measured? Fundamentally, I believe that if you can't in some way quantify it, then you can't improve it. So I would suggest that the first thing to do would be to set up some kind of metrics programme for whatever it is that you feel needs to be improved, instead of fiddling while Rome's perhaps beginning to smoulder. --Malleus Fatuarum 03:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that spending inordinate ammounts of time analyzing the situation is in order. There is the problem of paralysis by analysis: Processes that obviously need fixing by simple observation go unfixed while we try to prove what we already know: the current system, while it works, works poorly and can be replaced by a better system that would work better. This is hypothetical; I am not saying the system is broken, but what I am saying is that to deny that personal experiences with the system are an invalid way of measureing the system is simply paralysis by analysis... There will never be enough data in a timely enough manner to act upon, so it will simply kill needed improvements. What is for sure is that a) many people outside of these processes resent them and b) some of them, ESPECIALLY peer review, DO NOT WORK. It doesn't take much analysis. Look at the current peer review page, and count how many responses each posting gets. There are currently 103 open peer review requests; and by my count only 47 have received any comments. It is not uncommon for an article to languish there. There is also the non-quantifiable problem of respect for the entire process. How do you measure how much respect the review system gets among editors. GA gets a fair amount of undeserved shit because of the perception that it is unchecked (not true) biased (not true) and redundant with FA (also not true). Don't imply that something cannot be fixed unless a number can be placed next to it and we must somehow improve that number. Sometimes statistics are useful, othertimes they are damned lies. Lets not kill the entire improvement process before it starts because we don't have some meaningless numbers to improve on. I will bold this so it can be clear: I am not proposing that a single one of my suggested improvements be acted upon However, you seem to be implying that even small improvements or tweaks to the system cannot be made without some long, detailed statistical analysis, which to me seems like stonewalling. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:02, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have to agree with Jayron here about one thing; the issues with the review process as a whole on wikipedia has some quite fundamental issues that are not easily fixed, and not localized to be able to clearly point the finger at either FAC, GAN, or PR. These issues aren't going to be fixed overnight, and we can't really solve them by tweaking a couple of templates and review instructions, as we've done quite a bit recently with improving the GA system this past summer. The changes are going to take some time, and probably won't be immediately evident. I would suggest that we should take a step back and chill a little bit; let the GA sweeps conclude and maybe do another backlog elimination drive, and continue to promote FAC and develop it. These seem to be our two strongest review programs going right now. At some point, we'll figure out how PR fits into the whole equation. But it will take time. Dr. Cash 06:18, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Derek.cashman is right. My tone was becoming combative, and I unequivocally apologize for that. However, lets not dismiss the entire idea of a centralized review process before we see what can be hammered out here and if we can generate some bold and new ideas on what might improve the process.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:23, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

That there's inefficiency is understood, which is why this workshop exists. I agree PR stands out most especially; I think it should be handed to the projects.

So it doesn't get lost in the shuffle, would two streams work for GA?: one to identify good short articles, and one "recommend FAC" queue. Marskell 06:24, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I haveto say I thought things were working ok in all areas apart PR, though PR's inaction was havinga knockdown effect on the others (not hugely but noticeable). To me this whole thread, though interesting, is investing a huge amount of input for very little payoff. Given it is a volunteer project the maximum benefit I can see is only going to be a minor streamlining really. Why not just concentrate on bolstering PR?cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:28, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that suggestion has been tried before, and without many results. In many ways, I would be tempted to eliminate PR completely. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:46, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it really fits to combine "short" with "good" articles (e.g. "good short articles"). Remember, we have to vastly different things here; quality and quantity. There's lots of GAs that are not short, and not necessarily all of them will be promoted to FA. But FAs don't necessarily have to all consist of ridiculously long articles, either (granted, an article as short as a stub will never be promoted, but we have to get away from thinking that just because an article is short, it either can't be FA or has to be GA). Dr. Cash 07:54, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting so many mixed signals on this. In the edit history of this page, Lara says that identifying good short articles is "precisely what GA does." But every time I suggest explicitly focusing on short articles people say "no, that's not really the target." Dunno. Marskell 10:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Idea - devolving PR to wikiprojects

Howsabout trying to devolve PR to the various wikiprojects? Serves to promote importance of wikiprojects by hopefully encouraging article improvement there rather than on a general page, with a PR coordiantor who can leave PR to only contain articles not related to a psecific wikiproject -the reduction in the queue might make for more reviews there. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:54, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

In my view, wikiprojects are perennially "mentioned", to the point where a newcomer might get the impression that they are a fundamental organizational component of wikipedia—but really, on the whole, they barely exist, except in name (in my experience). I don't think PR could be channeled to projects for that reason. ¶ Since I'm on this page: I do like this general movement towards combining peer review and GA, and simply letting the nominator have the choice of saying, "please review this" or "please review this and add it to the list of good articles if you think it passes". I don't see how it couldn't be an improvement, with the only hurdle being the community that doesn't want GA to be touched. (And incidentally, I generally like GA, and I don't view it as duplication or inefficient.) –Outriggr § 08:27, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

There already exist several topic-specific peer review processes, as well as Wikipedia:Scientific peer review, which appears to be marginally more successful that PR itself. Some WikiProjects are alive and well, and indeed very active. Others need encouragement. Geometry guy 10:34, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

That's a point. Maybe if PR just ceases to exist then it will all go to GA anyway. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:58, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Development of the above

Although I rather like the idea of a centralised review process for the entire WP project, and we may even manage to hammer out something that PR, GA and FA will all agree on (stranger things have happened), as mentioned above eventually these 'streamlining' proposals will also need to take account of almost every wikiproject out there. MilHist, for example, has its own A-class review process; IMO correctly since the best judges of article content quality are likely to be found working in their own areas. It would also make sense to me to involve the LoCE early on.

Concerning the overall review process, this might lead to a three-tier system, where GA (or its equivalent) reviews articles for MoS/prose/policy compliance; A-class (or equivalent) where content reviews are completed in-project by subject experts, and finally FA (or equivalent) where the whole package is quality-checked and made as good as it can possibly be. The LoCE could be formally brought into the process at some point (maybe during the first stage). Compared to the current set-up, this would more clearly define and demarcate the roles for each existing area, would ensure that articles reaching the FA stage are already very good, and would place the burden of initial contact on the GA project which, of the candidates, seems best able to cope with an increasing workload. I can see loads of potential problems with this (not the least of which is the role of PR), but since we're just brainstorming... ;) EyeSerene^TALK 16:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I do like the idea of bringing in copy editors at some point in the review process. But I wouldn't think we want this at the GAN stage, rather at the FAC stage. One of the biggest things I hate about FAC is the tendency of reviewers to primarily cite a bunch of WP:MOS and copy editing types of suggestions, with little guidance on improving the actual content. I would much rather have the FAC reviews focus more on the actual content, overall readability (beyond simple grammar), and citation issues, and then just simply fix any major copyediting issues in the end automatically. So maybe the FAC closing procedure needs to change so that once the article's discussion is closed, the article is placed into a brief queue whereby it is gone over by an editor with extensive experience in copyediting, for a final check of the minor details. Once it passes that stage, it becomes WP:FAC.

Of course, we'd need more than just Raul involved, since I don't think he wants to check every single article that passes FAC himself. Maybe have 5-10 assistant FA directors, or certified FA copyeditors, which would do the final check and certify it. Raul could then promote all the articles that they certify. Dr. Cash 20:02, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I see the idea of actually scrapping PR has been floated... Perhaps the page could be a list of targets that do work: See scientific peer review, MiltHist review, etc. I'd also like to encourage user talk: "editors are strongly encouraged to seek out other users for a review either through the history of similar articles or at Wikiprojects." We could have a list of people willing to do reviews for various topic areas on the PR page and the actual reviews could be done at article talk. That would be far more useful than simply throwing up your review and hoping somebody stops by. Marskell 10:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

PR proposal

Peer review The Wikipedia Peer review is a centralized list of active review processes and users willing to help with reviewing. Reviews themselves are not listed here as a generalized peer review has proven uneven in producing content improvement. Rather, editors are either directed to a more specific review process or provided a list of users who are willing to be contacted on their user talk pages. In the latter case, reviews take place on article talk: start a thread and provide a link to the volunteer editor(s). If a subject area is not listed here, editors are strongly encouraged to seek out other users for a review either through the history of similar articles or at Wikiprojects. If there is a topic area that you are interested in, you may volunteer as a reviewer here.

Marskell 13:18, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I like the tone of the above. Check below for an alternate idea. Plus, PR is a Good Thing (tm), but it needs fixing so it works better, not scrapping.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 16:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Another idea for how to handle Peer Review

Change the locus of the review. The Peer Review page still exists, but no actual reviews happen on that page. Instead, it acts as a clearinghouse for articles requesting Peer Review. Reviewers come to the Peer Review page to see articles that are requesting review. Each article title will use the {{La}} template and that is it. The reviewers are directed to make comments on the article's talk page, perhaps under a designated Peer Review section, which can be set aside on the talk page itself, perhaps by a border and color change, so as to indicate it is the official "peer review section". That way, relevent improvement discussions are moved to the talk pages of the articles, where it is more appropriate and more likely to attract more attention; the PR page is shortend significantly (the page size is one hindrance of productive work there) and otherwise the process still exists. Ideas?--Jayron32|talk|contribs 16:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

What's the word for an article that's good enough?

I think it would be good to have a way to refer to an article that is "good enough". What I mean by that is an article which, if we were a for-profit encyclopedia, we would regard as good enough to publish. "Finished" would be the right word if it weren't for the fact that we know many articles will continue to evolve. Perhaps "!finished", to use a standard Wikipedia approach, though that's a bit in-group-ish. Anybody got a better idea?

The reason I want this term is that I want a way to talk about articles that are good enough to accept, without referring to the existing processes. Featured articles are intended to be the best of Wikipedia, but lists, pictures, portals and topics are done by independent processes. I also don't want to bias discussions by making it appear that I'm talking about FA as the ideal process. Of course, if we (and FA, and Raul) were to agree that featured articles and !finished articles should be one and the same, that would be an important point to establish. But until we've agreed that I'd like a word we can use.

Then maybe it would be a good idea to define what "!finished" means -- we could do that in terms of FA/FL/FP/FT/FPO etc if we like, and could then figure out what's missing from that definition. It might not be possible to go into every nook and cranny (when is a mainspace template !finished? a mainspace category?) but it would be good to at least outline what's there. It's often been said that short articles aren't well addressed by the existing content review processes. I think that if short articles can be !finished, then they should be addressable; if not, they shouldn't exist. Mike Christie (talk) 20:30, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I really can't see how altering the accepted dictionary definition of "finished" would be likely to lead to anything other than further confusion. Fundamentally, every article is "!finished", and always will be. --Malleus Fatuarum 21:11, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

All I meant to do with "!finished" was to draw an analogy with "!vote" which looks like a vote, but isn't. The word isn't important, but I think the concept is. Is there an existing term in use in WP talk that means this? Mike Christie (talk) 21:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)