Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles

This page, a part of the Good article talk page collection, is archived by MiszaBot II. If your discussion was mistakenly archived feel free to go retrieve it. Current Archive location: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Archive 3

Archives
March 2006: Setting up; Use of icon in article space April 2006 – July 2007 August 2007 – Present

Hidden categories

Shouldn't the subcategories of Category:WikiProject Good articles which are placed on the talk pages of articles be in Category:Hidden categories (using __HIDDENCAT__, or perhaps {{hiddencat}})? Category talk:Hidden categories suggests that this should be done for "maintenance categories, i.e. those which describe the present state of the article". It would allow the good article category to be put back onto the article itself rather than the talk page. GreenReaper (talk) 23:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Good

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

PS: There's only 4,572 of them, shouldn't take you too long. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 00:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Only 1470 GAs were "selected". Gimmetrow 00:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Dang, you're right. Ah well, no problem at all then. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 00:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

JoJo (singer)

Article is up for reassessment, it needs a lot of work. — Realist² 21:50, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

See Talk:JoJo (singer)/GA1 and please help out, both with the review and the article. Geometry guy 22:12, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Short articles

Is there any minimum limit to the size of a GA candidate? Many articles are unavoidably short because there is very little data available and, if all of that is used in the article, we could be looking at something which is only 3k or less. But does that disqualify it from becoming a GA even when it meets all of the listed criteria? BlackJack | ^{talk page} 18:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

No, no minimum size. All that's required is that the article deals with its subject's major topics (as opposed to being comprehensive, as required by FA). --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 18:53, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Malleus. We've a few short articles in WP:CRIC that are complete in terms of the available data and are currently rated B-class. I'll see if they are ready for GAN. Regards. BlackJack | ^{talk page} 15:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

DYK

There have been a number of interesting discussions related to short articles, GAs, featured content and so on. After following from a distance, I've added a proposal to the maelstrom at WT:FAC#Featured_content.2C_editor_motivation_and_GA. It is intended to encourage cross-process and Wikipedia-wide thinking, as much as being a particular idea. Geometry guy 21:28, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I completely support G-Guy's idea, or some version of it. (Btw, why talk about it at FAC? It concerns Good Articles.) G-Guy is proposing that a couple of GAs each day show up on the main page, with less coverage than WP:TFA but more coverage than the WP:DYK articles. I don't know how excited Raul is going to be about increasing his workload, but there's a lot of potential here. If Raul chooses to throw how many times articles are viewed into his selection process, it would encourage people to get some of the most-read articles up to GA. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this could also be a good idea, but I'd like to see a quick review of the article before it reaches the main page to ensure that it actually does meet GA criteria. The application of the criteria can be spotty. A process similar to WP:TFAR might help with that. Karanacs (talk) 14:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I think some kind of pre-main page check would be a very good idea. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 14:55, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

←Is this a good idea? Every proposal I've ever seen concerning reviewing has had upsides and downsides, and made some people happier than others. If we do this right, I see potential for everyone to get what they want. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive)

• I think it's a very good idea, but I have grave doubts surrounding its practicality, as too many have an almost instinctive antipathy towards any recognition of GAs, much less allowing them on the main page. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 17:21, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Are we agreed that the first step is to present a persuasive proposal to Mark (User:Raul654)? He decides what goes on the main page.- Dan Dank55 (send/receive)

• Is the decison his alone to make? If so, then he clearly needs to be on board with the idea before going any further. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 17:21, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it will be easier to start small and grow if we don't create new names or processes. If we are just talking about Good Articles, that's the best way to motivate people to write more Good Articles. And we're talking about the WP:DYK section, because everyone knows what that is, just with a bit more detail for Good Articles. I like Karanacs' idea of an equivalent to WP:TFAR, which would help with fairness and with the perception of fairness, but let's make sure Mark/Raul is on board before we try to sell him on a new process.- Dan Dank55 (send/receive)

A lot of people are concerned that the most-read articles on Wikipedia are not being worked on carefully or reviewed, and there's nothing in the GAN or FAC processes that fixes that. If Raul chooses to bias his selection for Good Articles at DYK a bit in the direction of those GAs that are getting a lot of page hits, just like the 0.7 process biases selection, this would address something that GAN and FAC aren't. Is this desirable? I like the idea of a biased selection process a lot better than I like it when I see hurricane and roads editors blamed for writing yet another featured article on hurricanes and roads ... they're not the problem.- Dan Dank55 (send/receive)

I agree, of course, with the concerns above that any Good Article that shows up on the main page should be copyedited to make sure it's engaging and conforms to WIAGA criteria. But if you get people competing for the main page, maybe they'll spend more time trying to make the GA they just wrote look pretty, instead of working on another GA. This kind of trade-off is the oldest debate at GAN. I think I have a solution, and I'm willing to put in the work to make it happen; I'll commit to doing the copyediting for every article until I can recruit people to help, and I don't think I'll have a problem recruiting. There are a lot of journalism students, underemployed freelance writers, and under-motivated but talented Wikipedians who would be very interested in being able to pick a subject, copyedit articles in that subject, get feedback from experienced writers who know AP Stylebook and good writing practices, and then have their work show up on the main page. This is how writing in the real world works, usually: some people crank it out, while other people are fussy and do the polishing.- Dan Dank55 (send/receive)

FAC reviewers are very keen for more people to learn the style guideslines and WIAFA and participate in reviewing. The problem, of course, is that we/they do a lot of preaching to the choir, and not so much community outreach. This is the perfect context for exposing people to the various standards at FAC, without requiring them to write a featured article first.- Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)