Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 1

message: In the German wikipedia, good articles, as well as excellent (featured) articles, are tagged direcly on the Article page. The advantage of this, imho, is that it makes readers appreciate what they're reading; most readers who are not editors will hardly ever take a look at the talk page. Furthermore, when there's a vote to declare an article as good, it can be seen much easier on the article page than on the talk page; this is another way of making non-editor readers participate in Wikipedia.
Another advantage would be that everyone would be much more aware of this Good articles project, and thus, more people might get around to contribute to it.
German templates are much smaller and, I would say, more elegant than the English ones. You can see them at :de:Vorlage:Lesenswert and :de:Vorlage:Exzellent, they just say that the article has been added to the list of good / excellent articles. There are also tags for addition and removal, of course. I think these tags culd be adapted to English with little graphic reworking; perhaps we could also ask their author if we want them.--Robin.rueth 22:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template on the article page, not on the talk page 

message: I think this is a good idea. I tried to add a talk box above, but couldn't seem to get it right. --Vaoverland 17:09, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good idea 

message: What does it mean for an article to "be stable"? Does it mean that it has remained in a format for some length of time and that there is a lack of frequent large-scale edits? --Anon.
:Just means there should be no on-going edit wars.  Worldtraveller 22:29, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stability 

message: I especially like the idea of allowing individuals to list and de-list per the criteria. However, aren’t all featured articles by definition at least good articles? Should they then not be added en masse? However, if the point of this page is to serve as a queue of potential FA candidates, then that may not be a good idea (unless they are IDd by being bold or something but then somebody is going to need to check once in a while to see if the article has been deFAd). Also, I can see this page getting real big fairly fast and thus require subpages and maintenance help from the various portals (each portal may want to have their own good article list). --mav 15:11, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Nah, just confuse things to mark all FA with GA. Let's just assume FA subsumes GA ;-) - David Gerard 23:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neat idea 

message: Finest. Idea. Ever. Can we get consensus on some criteria and start spreading this template far and wide? - David Gerard 23:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Love it.

message: I really like this idea, so I'm going to start adding a few articles (I've just added David Beckham).  I think the text on the banner needs changing: I'd like to see "adhering to the quality standards leading to a featured article" replaced with something like "meets certain standards" with a link to the standards.  The way it's worded at the moment sounds a little like it's just fractionally of FA standard, which I think is setting the bar a bit high.  CTOAGN (talk) 01:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say going through all failed FA candidates would be a good start - any that missed it by just a bit would be worth listing - David Gerard 10:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Good idea

message: :Category:Wikipedia good articles contains everything with Template:GA on it - David Gerard 10:46, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Category

message: Looking through some of the current articles listed as Good articles, I noticed that several of them listed the sources used under a Bibliography section instead of a References section as recommended by Wikipedia:Cite sources.  While I do not consider this to be a major problem, it does raise the question of whether an article should conform to the style manual before being considered a Good Article.  I personally believe that all articles should try to conform if for no other reason that the style manual allows for a consistent look and feel across all Wikipedia articles, but if someone has a well-reasoned argument for why the style manual should not be used I am willing to listen. --Allen3 talk 13:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would ditto that. Johnleemk | Talk 14:27, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I concur. — mark ✎ 16:38, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Should a Good Article conform to [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style]]?

message: Just by looking at the rail transport section I predict that this page is going to be swamped very quickly.  My alternative suggestion would be for the various WikiProjects to identify their own articles as "good" and maintain that list as part of the relevant portal.  violet/riga (t) 11:50, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We've got a list of featured articles on the Trains WikiProject page already.  It would be pretty easy to add the Good section to that part of the page.  In fact, thinking about it more, the list of Good Articles from here could be easily put into a subpage (say Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Good articles) that could be transcluded both here and there so that only one list needs maintenance.  This seems like it could lead to a workable solution for all WikiProjects.  For topics that don't have projects yet, leave their lists here. slambo 12:11, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Swamped 

message: I read on the project page that "It is probably best to avoid self-nominating articles as this can introduce bias", so I thought I'd leave a comment about the Robert Clark (actor) article here and let others judge if it meets the criteria of a good article. There is a nice free license publicity photo at the top of the article, the fair use images have source, copyright information and fair use rationale on their description pages, the article is NPOV (containing quotes from critics and other people about his work), has notes and references sections to support everything, and there are no fansite links in the external links section. Was the subject of a peer review (see here), but I did not submit it for featured article status as I knew it was too short. Extraordinary Machine 13:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Robert Clark (actor)]] 

message: In response to some of the criticism of this process, and remembering previous writing competitions...
I've created Wikipedia:Article rating competition, a proposal for a weekly process by which articles are submitted for informal rating under a given topic.  Take a look and feel free to comment on the talk page.  violet/riga (t) 17:55, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article rating competition 

message: People seem to be objecting to the current process of anyone being able to list or delist articles here.  I only started it off like that to get it underway, and certainly think some kind of approval mechanism could be sensible.  Any thoughts on one?  It needs to be much simpler than FAC.  Sorry, I can´t sign any of the comments I´ve just left above because I´m on a keyboard with no tilde to be found anywhere.  User:Worldtraveller.
:My suggestion would be to 1)Very clearly lay out what defines a good article. This is still being argued about here. This point is vital. We need to know exactly what to look for as well as what defines Good Articles as opposed to FA's. And 2)I think it would be ideal to set it up just like FAC with a removal page as well.  
:I came up with an idea similar to this a while back while pondering the problems of Wikipedia. As I see it, this is, in a way, a method of giving ratings to articles which certainly helps in letting people know how trustworthy the material is and this system delineates a path an article must travel from creation to FA status. Carry on! *Exeunt* Ganymead Dialogue? 23:11, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Process

message: Objections (no images, no references) have been corrected. --FuriousFreddy 08:24, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Rhythm and blues]] 

message: I wrote this article a long time ago, and have been constantly improving it since. So far it has been through three failed but close FAC nominations and one peer review. I think it certainly qualifies as a Good article. — Wackymacs 23:29, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it. --Maru  (talk) Contribs 03:54, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Xanadu House]] ? 

message: Hello. Regarding, good articles, what do you think of Wikipedia:Stable versions (formerly Wikipedia:Requests for publication) -- Zondor 03:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia:Stable versions 

message: I'd like to see this be a place for the top 2% of WP articles.  I don't know that a single page with one link per title is the right way to go in the end; we need to find better ways to view tens of thousands of articles effectively.  But a layered system of tagging, something like
 0.2% - FA (featured)
   2% - GA (good)
  20% - HA (half-decent)
would be very useful to me -- and likely to reusers looking for a quick cull of good content for specific applications.  If we have a rating system set up, its output could be used to auto-generate an HA list.  A GA list could be maintained by hand; with O(100) additions a day.  An FA list can continue to be maintained by extensive debate, both moderating the list and improving our quality guidelines as time goes on.  +sj + 08:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sj, you may find some of the results of my search for Good Articles relevant to this goal. One source I have been using to find thru the 800,000+ articles on Wikipedia are several Random Pages Tests other users have pedrformed, & I'm struck by the fact that of 10 random pages returned, usually one is "good" quality. (I must emphasize the "usually" because I did a Random Page test for 20 pages, & found none I would consider honestly rate as good.) This suggests to me that 5-10% of all Wikipedia articles may fall into the "good" category; we haven't added them to this list yet because of the challenge of sifting thru the chaff to find the wheat. (Another consistent finding is that 40-50% of articles are stubs -- meaning that a lot of needed improvement on Wikipedia still remains.) -- llywrch 20:24, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My own feeling when I created this page was that it would be quite easy to build up a list of several thousand articles.  2% would be about 16,000 articles, a figure which may well be attainable if we could just find all the good articles we currently have.  When we get to the stage of having several thousand articles listed, we will definitely have to find a better way of displaying them.  Perhaps dynamic navigation boxes could be useful?  They would allow us to still keep all the GAs on one page but allow the reader to open the boxes they are interested in. Worldtraveller 03:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  2% goal 

message: The two talk page templates were just tagged with TFD this afternoon.  I voted keep as they are a part of the process we've been working on here. Slambo (Speak) 23:59, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{tl|GA}} and {{tl|DelistedGA}} on TFD 

message: I really think that the criterion for images should mention that the images be properly tagged with copyright information. It seems a bit redundant considering that it already is official policy on Wikipedia, but it's worth mentioning. --Jtalledo (talk) 16:10, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, definitely, and adjusted the text accordingly. Worldtraveller 03:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images 2 

message: I wanted to mention that other work on identifying good articles is going on at the Wikipedia 1.0 project.  I think much of what we are doing is complementary to the GA proposal.  The main assessment method is described here and is based on the WP:Chem system, are the criteria helpful for this project?  As you can see from the WP 1.0 page, we have three subprojects trying to identify good articles that are not FAs but good enough for publication. One of these, WikiSort, is linked up with the plans at Meta to automate the article validation process, something people here should be aware of. I think your work here will be very helpful for us at WP 1.0, keep up the good work! Walkerma 06:55, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Connections with the Wikipedia 1.0 Project 

message: I recently added all of the articles from the WP:Chem Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals/List of A-Class articles.  These articles relate only to chemical compounds, and they are the result of work at the project worklist that tracks around 380 articles according to these criteria.  I should mention that some of the articles I have added were written or heavily modified by myself, but in every case the "A-Class" assessment was the result of peer review within the WikiProject.  Meanwhile over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry we recently began a similar worklist; this is officially just at the proposal stage but people seem to be happily adopting it, so I expect we will be able to provide some more general chemistry articles to the GA list quite soon. Walkerma 07:08, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chemistry articles 

message: doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to emulate the featured article template cycle. Templates for failed or delisted featured articles are useful because they link to an arena of discussion which indicates why it failed or was delisted. On the other hand, all this template says is "this is an average joe article", which isn't saying much. If someone wants an average article, they can click the random article link. To reiterate, noting "good" articles may be useful because it provides a list of articles which are ready to be corralled into featured articles, while noting articles that are not "good" serves no purpose. I think instead if someone disagrees with a GA listing, they should just remove the template and apply an appropriate cleanup template for the area it is lacking (probably ) or just say why in the edit summary.—jiy (talk) 16:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The more I read others' opinions and think about this issue, the lack of a link to a peer review is a compelling argument against the template.  However, I think deleting it would be premature as we're already discussing (albeit slowly) instituting such a discussion mechanism.  Whether it ends up as a WikiProject or nomination subpages is yet to be seen.  On the third hand, it could easily be created with better wording, graphics and links once the process is in place.  I guess I'm slowly comming around to indifferent on deleting .  Slambo (Speak) 19:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  I don't see any use for Template:DelistedGA 

message: I humbly suggest that this policy proposal be linked with the proposed Wikipedia:Stable versions.  In my neck of the woods (mathematics), we've got maybe a thousand articles (out of 12,000) that could be marked as "good", but I am exhausted by the vandalism patrol needed to keep them good. For example, gravity: every science-punk high-school snot thinks they can "improve" this article, and the result is a horrid mix of genius and utter crap that no one wants to maintain. Slapping a GA label on it helps no one, as it will continue to be vandalised, and I'll still be exhausted trying to patrol it. I want a mechanism that will allow me to focus on writing and editing, instead of patrolling.linas 20:51, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Welcome to the collective nightmare.  We're all digging holes in sand here.  Feel lucky your area of focus doesn't intersect with pop culture.  But "Good Articles" isn't really the root of the problem you describe; in fact it is a perfect self-validation tool for all the Gen-Y'ers who can't go a day without being told how great they are, and thus may keep them out of our way a while longer.  Jgm 14:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link with [[Wikipedia:stable versions]] 

message: Because the History section has grown so large (itmay actually be larger than the Rail transport section), I've transcluded it to its own page, much as the nominations at AfD are done. I hope this change won't confuse anyone. -- llywrch 19:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structure update 

message: I tried to add a designated good article to its appropriate section. I clicked save page and it showed up on that little subpage that comes up after you edit a section, but when I went back to the main article, it wasn't there. I refreshed the page, nothin'. Then I clicked the little edit link and it showed up on the edit page. I looked at the history section and it didn't show me as having made an edit. Anyone know what in God's name is going on? -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 01:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds like a simple caching side effect.  See the instructions at Wikipedia:Bypass your cache for common methods for forcing a reload of your web browser's cache.  If that does not do the trick, the next bigger hammer is at Wikipedia:Purge. --Allen3 talk 01:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It displays now. If it was there from the get-go, I'm fine. I just wasn't sure if it got through or not. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 06:05, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What the Heck? 

message: I've been reading the comments on here for sometime and while I do support this I must stand with the others who argue that there needs to be a process for nominating and removing articles otherwise this proposal will fall flat. The only suggestions for a process so far is one that will mirror FAC and FARC. Can anyone suggest anything better or shall we begin to go about setting up GAC and GARC? What needs to be done to set these up? *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 16:39, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please explain how this will be different from FAC and FARC. — mark ✎ 16:44, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, I have added a few failed FA's as well. Most were removed due to fairly minor issues, but they are still good articles. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 17:43, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Setting up GAC and GARC

message: Wikipedia will have a rating feature very soon, which will allow editors to rate articles. This will obviate the need for a "good articles" process - any article above a certain rating can be considered "good". Radiant_>|< 22:48, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure it would make GA redundant, otherwise presumably it would also make FAC redundant, no? Worldtraveller 23:40, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I feel the need to emphasise: GA has solid criteria as well!  They're modelled closely on the FA criteria, so if they're not solid, then neither are the FA criteria. Worldtraveller 03:10, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

text: While that process is still evolving, I've reworked  a bit to emphasize that this is not a policy (yet). The pervious wording was very declamatory. -- nae'blis (talk) 15:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Does an encyclopedia usually go around saying good article bad article?  Not really.  I'm not sure it belongs here.--Samuel J. Howard 10:06, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: So Wikipedia is not your usual encyclopedia. — mark ✎ 10:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The number of labeled articles keeps being cited as "support", but I could label lots of articles in a couple of hours.--Samuel J. Howard 02:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Another note

message: A lot of people complained that  was too obtrusive on talk pages.  I've just created  as an alternative, in a different format which I hope will still draw attention to the reasons why an article might have been removed, without being obtrusive. Worldtraveller 16:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New template for removed listings

message: Someone more active on this than me may want to have a look at Antoine Lavoisier, listed as a GA. Not a single citation, as far as I can tell, just a "Further reading" list. Looks essentially correct, but I'm not sure I'd have singled it out. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:37, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This seems OK to me; do references have to include specific page numbers to count? I had thought not, particularly if the entire book is about Lavoisier.  As for why it was chosen, it was possibly because it was recently assessed as "A-Class" on the newChemistry worklist. Walkerma 02:00, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If the further reading section is actually the references section, it ought to be renamed, and the article would certainly meet the GA criteria, but at the moment it does appear to lack references.  Worldtraveller 19:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Looking at the history, the original article was written in September 2001 by none other than Larry Sanger himself, and four of the "further reading" citations were listed at the same time the article was posted.  Wikipedia states that "references" are used in writing the article, whereas "further reading" material is not, but I doubt such definitions existed here in 2001.  I think we have to assume that those citations were used by Sanger when writing the article (why would he post books he didn't use, and omit to list books he did use?).  Indeed, the traité elementaire is explicitly referenced in the text in Sanger's article. Therefore at least four citations would seem to qualify for the modern definition of references, and there may be others. I have amended the page accordingly. Is it now a definite GA? Walkerma 19:52, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely looks good to me now!  I too would assume that what was listed all those years ago as further reading was almost certainly used as a reference, and it could be the other works are references as well, and were just added under the already existing heading. Worldtraveller 20:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Lavoisier