Wikipedia talk:Good article criteria/Archive 2

message: Quote: "these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (15kb or less) in mind."  is this really still true?  Most of the articles in WP:GA and WP:GAC are far from short.  Perhaps we need to think of a new statement to replace that one.--Konstable 00:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think so, it was added awhile ago by User:Worldtraveller, but I think we recently changed the "recommended size" up to like 25 kb on the GA candidates page anyway. I personally never liked the idea to discourage large articles in the first place but some people seem to feel it has merit. Homestarmy 00:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Short? 

message: As a semi-regular reviewer of articles in which I have some knowledge, I'm seeing that there is an issue with the stability provision that is the cause of an recurring problem that can result in the de-listing of otherwise GA articles. 
The stability provision is too easily gamed by pov-pushers on controversial topics to discredit articles and gain the upper hand in content disputes. Once an article has achieved GA status, pov-pushers can threaten and have made bad objections at WP:GA/R over bogus/contrived NPOV disputes, thereby forcing questionable content into article in the interest of keeping or regaining GA status. 
Furthermore, the very nature of controversial topics, magnets for ideological ax-grinders, precludes them from being particularly stable. Now of course no reasonable person expects articles on controversial topics to be completely stable, but when reasonable, expected instability for the topic is cited as a justification for de-listing alongside other possible issues, some of which are clearly made in bad faith, then it becomes an issue. Add the absence of a meaningful metric for what constitutes acceptable/unacceptable stability, and you have a recipe for disputes of de-listing and more opportunities for gaming of system in the confusion.
Clearly some accommodation needs to be codified for articles on contentious topics, meaning a change to the provision.  Any provision that fails to take into account pov-motivated objections is flawed. Failing to fix this issue puts GA at risk of becoming irrelevant to a large segment of WP articles - those on perennially controversial issues. FeloniousMonk 19:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Felonious, I think your taking the review of the creation-evolution controversy a bit too far, Agne has never shown any signs of being a POV pusher, and anyone can make mistakes on the stability criteria. Besides, most edit wars concerning the topics I think your talking about end rather quickly, since one side generally gets blocked for not knowing the policies. Homestarmy 19:26, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dealing with Bad Faith objections on controversial topics 

message: As presently worded, this requirement would seem to be higher than the sourcing requirement for featured articles. The featured article criteria only demand the provision of a "References" section in which sources are set out and, where appropriate, complemented by inline citations, whereas this list states that the citation of sources using inline citations is required. Just pointing out that it might be worth clarifying that in-line cites need to be used where appropriate, not for every single sourced fact.  -- (Lee)Bailey(talk) 18:27, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No consensus was reach for the change you ask for the reason that it is up to the reviewer to, in a friendly and unbiaised way, state which citations are needed and to clearly say why they are needed (NPOV, OR, biased statement or non-reliable source used). A month ago there were lenghty discussions pertaining to this subject and nothing was solved. People are inherently afraid of adding inline citations and for that matter, having a stricter criterion makes citing articles way better. Take Criticism of Microsoft for example where it is missing citations but in some sense it already has enough to pass GA. Lincher 22:10, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But GA shouldn't be stricter than FA.  FA only requires in-line citations where appropriate. If there was never any consensus for the present wording, all the more reason to change it to reflect actual pratice.  -- Bailey(talk) 22:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, "citation of its sources using inline citations is required" doesn't say citations have to be everywhere, if you wanted to get technical about it, this criteria alone might mean you could just have a single inline citation. Of course, that's not "well-referenced"..... Homestarmy 01:10, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see that, but without the "where appropriate" clause, there's room for misinterpretation; I encountered an editor just last week who believed this meant every single factoid in an article needed an in-line cite. Given that there's a lot of confusion about this subject, would it harm anything to borrow FA's wording and perhaps link to policy/guidelines for clarification as to what "where appropriate" means?  -- Bailey(talk) 15:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation requirement 2b

message: Can we all agree on my addition that "this criterion is disputed"...?  As CMummert notes, a significant number of people have disputed it.  Or do people outside the "team of GA reviewers" really not get a voice at all? -- SCZenz 16:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The group that removes the assertion that it is disputed is also small. So? Septentrionalis 00:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Again, this is not just math and physics editors. Editors from almost all the sciences have objected. And "math and physics" is not one group or a small group but do very different groups with different interests and yes who agree to this. JoshuaZ 21:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Nobody seems to of brought up that proposed guideline of theirs to this talk page yet, we should probably discuss it, I for one think it has merit, (at least, when I read it it seemed pretty good) and would count in terms of whether an article has inline citation or not. (If I understand it correctly, at the beginning of paragraphs or sections, a few general books or references which cover the whole thing are cited, then nothing else needs to be since it all flows from those refs.) Homestarmy 22:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Somewhat. My reading of it is slightly more restrictive than that. It can be found at Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines. I also think that this isn't all about the 2b matter- discussions about a need for science citations had occured before, and this only helped spur the proposal onwards. JoshuaZ 22:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, if that ever becomes a guideline, then I think it would be easy enough to solve this problem by saying "where appropriate, and when applicable, where appropriate according to Wikipedia guidelines". (though if it becomes part of the MoS it could just say "where appropriate, in compliance with the MoS"). Homestarmy 22:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

text: And Robert West and I objected, a couple sections above, on historical articles, as well as the sciences. Septentrionalis 00:54, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compromise? 

message: There's been a lot of discussion about Agrippina (opera). I do not consider the language of its version to be enough to pass it as a GA. I find the sentences and the paragraph too long for it to be "compelling". Can someone else comment?
Fred-Chess 12:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The guidelines say nothing about optimum paragraph or sentence length, which are almost wholly subjective matters. Swedish literature passed GA when large sections of it were barely comprehensible, let alone "well-written". I'm becoming seriously concerned about the seemingly  arbitrary nature of the whole GA selection process.--Folantin 12:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is best to have issues resolved between editor and reviewer, but if that is not possible it can be brought to GA Review for more editors to look at it. --RelHistBuff 12:51, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Excellent idea. I'll move my concern there and consider this thread closed. / Fred-Chess 13:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

text: GA was intended, originally, to be a list of articles liked by consensus; in the same sense that article text is consenus: If a couple ofeditoras like something and nobody seriously objects, it'll be in there. We really should consider restoring that condition. Septentrionalis 01:36, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, "Well-written" is pretty ambiguous, and it does often take a couple editors to decide in GA reviews :/. Homestarmy 01:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concerning "Well-written" 

message: I know lists cannot qualify as GAs, and I would (very safely) assume that portals, which are even further away from the concept of an "article" than a list, is also off-limits. I ask simply because someone put a portal- or, rather a sub-portal, on GAC, which I don't think I've ever seen before (possibly because nobody's ever done it). -- Kicking222 23:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Question answered by criteria change. Lincher 00:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: this change. Cbrown1023 00:27, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Portals

message: Right, I was wondering where the guidelines stand in relation to articles on rather uninteresting topics. For instance, as, according to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Precedents 'Cities and villages are notable, regardless of size'. So, say I worked heavily on an article about a village (Which I have, and though isn't now, it is the article that I can most likely meet 'Good Article' criteria) of no particular relevence in the grand scheme of things, could this become a good article just as easily as an article about a city? In fact, would it not be easier to get this to Good Article status, as there is so little that is to be said? Any help on the matter would be appreciated, I would be fair proud if I got a Good Article under my belt. J Milburn 19:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it would be far easier, since you wouldn't need as much content to be broad enough. The problem with many city articles i've seen is that their just so increadibly long, and due to the topic, they have to be :/. But a village probably wouldn't require, say, a step by step list of all notable landmarks and discussion of the cities history going back to the 1600's :D. (Unless its a really old village that's stayed perpetually small, but even then, that probably isn't too much history.) Homestarmy 19:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Small topics, such as villages 

message: I'd like to make a proposel about compliance with the MoS, which the current criteria says is more or less mandatory. The thing is, I think many of the things in the Manual of Style, when their followed, simply make articles look final and polished, rather than necessarily just "good". Since many people seem to feel that having the criteria so similiar to FA standards is problematic, I think this will be an easy way to both make the criteria not be so similiar, and make articles which are actually Good be allowed to stay on the list, even when their contradicting something in the MoS which might not be very important. Furthermore, the MoS is quite large, and I don't think most people even know everything that's in there, I know I'm certainly not familiar with it all. I think what we should do is re-write the MoS compliance part to name just a few parts of the Manual of Style that Good Articles should rightly satisfy, so that it doesn't look like there's some demand that, for instance, text needs to be nearly perfectly formatted or exceptionally Captionalized. 
In particular, I think that the vast majority of MoS related disputes i've seen concerning GA's involves only a few key parts of the MoS. In particular, I think WP:LEAD, WP:LAYOUT, WP:MOSDEF with jargon, WP:WTA which is like WP:WEASEL, and especially WP:WAF with fiction pretty much sums up the important stuff that comes up concerning Good Articles status. The special articles guidelines seem to be disputed, inactive, or developing, so I don't think we should be expected to grade articles by them. All of the supplementary manuals are just technical type stuff or how to format English correctly, and I don't think i've ever seen articles which comply with the GA criteria in every way except by having bad capitalization, improper dash use, or improper marking of trademarks. Command line use might be important at WP:MOSCOMM because programming articles would look a bit, well, un-good with improper use of it, but all in all, I don't think most manuals in this category on their own should really be helpful in deciding whether an article is "good" or not. Besides the fiction guideline, (Which is definently important in my opinion) in the other guidance section, most of those things are either redundent with other criteria anyway, or are fairly obscure, and things which I really don't think should impact whether or not an article is good. I propose that GA criteria 1(c) therefore be altered to read: "It follows the following elements of the Wikipedia Manual of style: Article lead guidelines, Article layout guidelines, Jargon guidelines, Words to avoid using, How to write about Fiction, and How to incorporate lists." Any thoughts? Because these seem to be the only major guidelines that really concern how "well-written" an article is that aren't redundent with something else in the GA criteria. Homestarmy 02:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Any thoughts at all? Homestarmy 03:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Should be uncontroversial. / Fred-Chess 17:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.
So that when our reviewers look through an article and decide that "sorry, the lead section must have one more sentence per WP:LEAD", it is hurting more than helping.
Therefore I have rewritten the criteria to say that as long as an article does not seriously violate any part of the MoS it should be OK (provided that it is otherwise comprehensible). 
I am happy if you want to "fix up" my edit in case I have used the wrong words, but I hope you will agree with what I am trying to say.
Fred-Chess 10:07, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, no article has ever had to comply with the lead guideline, they simply have to comply with it if it's going to be a GA, unless we run into some IAR thing. It was worse before technically, complying with the whole MoS? That's a bit severe. Homestarmy 17:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: An MoS Discussion

message: This edit is deplorable; I trust it will not recur. If we are going to have an interim form until consensus, it should either be the day before yesterday's text before Fred Chess's compromise, or the last undisputed form, from August. (It should also not make an incomplete and inaccurate account of the extent of the dispute.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree, the criteria was changing so rapidly, anyone trying to actually use it in a review would of had quite a tough time of doing it, especially for people who do a very detailed review, they could of started when the criteria said one thing and finished shortly after it changed. Homestarmy 22:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no objection to a stable text, although a disputed criterion should be appealled to gingerly, and someplace to edit the text now under discussion would be nice. However, a text which is not consensus - and was severely altered since - is unacceptable; so is misstatement of the extent and nature of this dispute. And this edit summary: "although not mandatory" was never in criterion 2b, is a falsehood, as the last stable version will show; there are only tweaks between then and 14 September. Indeed, it was the original wording of WP:WIAGA, and  there has never been consensus to change that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Deplorable edit

message: When I proposed the change to the MoS guideline, I forgot all about WP:SELF, I don't think it was listed in the main MoS template :(. I want to bring it up here because I think there's now a conflict of interest with the Platform game article up for a review right now, and while I personally think self-references just plain don't look good at all, I don't know if it could be justified that it counts as bad writing :/. So what does anyone think about adding WP:SELF to the MoS list there? Homestarmy 02:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see it; WP:SELF involves unnecessary references to Wikipedia. Do you mean the self-published sources exception in verifiability? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: An example from the article in question would be "Like so many of the gaming firsts mentioned in this article,...". Homestarmy 21:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think WP:SELF is intended to cover that. It has two rationales: references to Wikipedia can't be mirrored, and aren't encyclopedic. The first is no problem: the mirrored article will make perfect sense. I would rephrase that example, but I don't think the self reference is the problem with the tone. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it does in a nutshell, "...never allow the text of an article to assume that the reader is viewing it at Wikipedia, and try to avoid even assuming that the reader is viewing the article at a website." and it just looks un-good to me. The NPOV ness of some of the sentences in the article I think might be debated the other way, and the problem is, I was all set to continue to support my vote for delisting the article, until I realized WP:SELF is no longer part of the guidelines because it doesn't include the entire MoS anymore. Dunno why it wasn't in the MoS template, or if it was, how I missed it... Homestarmy 22:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You see some implication I don't; why couldn't that sentence stand in print? The referent is "this article". But delist on the grounds of bad writing and quote that in illustration; why not be clear? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly, by referencing the article itself, it assumes the reader is viewing the article at a website, in this case, this one. The problem is i'm not sure if self-references are necessarily bad writing, just non-encyclopedic writing where Wikipedia is concerned :/ .Homestarmy 22:29, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I find the sentence "The measure of allocative inefficiency used in this article is slightly different from the procedure used by Schmidt and Lovell" from an article printed in 1991 (bold added); how does this differ? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, if it was printed in 1991, I presume it's not on Wikipedia, I don't think WP:SELF would apply :).  Homestarmy 22:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Erg....

message: An anon changed the MoS guideline to " It follows certain elements of the Wikipedia Manual of style, namely the Article lead guideline, Article layout guideline, Jargon guideline, Words to avoid using guideline, List incorporation, as well as the relative article specific guidelines as found on the  template.", adding the last part with the style template, which in effect makes the change I made compleatly pointless, and makes it so articles must adhere to basically the entire MoS again. The anon seemed to be User:Tarret but he/she never responds on his/her user talk page, so I have no idea who this person is, though they seem to mirror Tarret's editing style. Can I get a consensus about the changes I proposed above about the MoS guideline, Fred said it shouldn't be controversial, but I don't want to fight against an anon who might be someone I would trust, or might be just some random person who likes to edit everything Tarret edits. Now, admittedly, I have no idea what "article specific guidelines" means, if that's the special article types I really don't like that at all because several of them were formerly rejected, (they seem to of been taken off the template or something) are proposed, or are just plain not planned out as well as other recognized parts of the MoS. Homestarmy 18:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the point may have been that a good article doesn't blatantly and causelessly violate any of the MoS. Nevertheless, I agree that the specific tests Homestarmy put in are what matter; and have attempted a compromise edit. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:34, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Well, that was pointless

message: Star Trek XI meets and exceeds all the GA requirements.  The article has over 40 citations, and even though it is a future film, it certainly is stable judging by its history.  However, when it was submitted for GAC, it was returned with the comment: "Wait until the film is released to nominate it, o and you missed this PLEASE DO NOT NOMINATE FILMS THAT HAVE NOT YET BEEN RELEASED AS DETAILS WITHIN THE ARTICLE MAY CHANGE BEFORE IT IS RELEASED. M3tal H3ad 01:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since I may not check this page frequently, if a consensus is established please leave me a message on my talk page.  Thanks.  --  Wikipedical 01:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That doesn't seem necessarily fair, lack of stability doesn't necessarily apply to something that is a future event unless the acticle actually is unstable. I would say that unless the article is unstable right here and now and it does actually fulfill all the criteria, it should be a GA, and if it does become too unstable in the future we can deal with that when it happens. Homestarmy 02:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Unlike the Harry Potter movie, this Star Trek film is likely years away from heavily substantial change in events leading to its production, the cast isn't even finalized. The Harry Potter film, on the other hand, is in the middle of being produced, trailers have already come out, and due to all the hubbub currently going on concerning it, it is far more likely to be unstable right here and now up until its release date, whereas the Star Trek film is not highly unstable at the moment, and there is still a chance for editors of the article to keep new information coming in at a steady, yet slow and stable pace. Also, it doesn't really look like there was much of a "we" involved on the Harry Potter talk page, I think a GA review might be in order, especially since there's now a hidden criteria at stake.  Homestarmy 02:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My apologies for the "we", I was just typing fast and inventing editors while I was at it. I would recommend that there be a poll/guidelines set up for future films/albums/books etc. of whether or not they should be included. It has been my experience in the past and reading from previous quick-fails of articles for having a future tag on it that has me saying no. But if there is consensus of editors who think that it is OK, then I'll support the majority. The only thing I would be worried about is having a good article, and once the film/album/book etc. is released having a large amount of editing once. From there, dedicated editors for the article could by then have dwindled off to pursue improving other articles, forcing the quality of the article to reach below GA and have to be delisted. I'm not saying for this particular article that that will happen, but there will be more future GA candidates later that could face that problem. But again, I'm willing to go through a poll (if that's how it is run for GA guidelines) to see what the general consensus is. --Nehrams2020 03:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We haven't had any polls in awhile, lately, GA/R's have been leading up to changes in policy, there's plenty of people who like to weigh in on things like this I think, and policy has changed once or twice based on events in GA/R's. Homestarmy 03:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

text: ....Okay, that's different than just being a movie that hasn't been produced yet :/. Homestarmy 13:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Future films 

message: If you spot a list of works, or a list of awards, that is in reverse-chronological order, please either correct it to chronological order as per WP:LOW, or tag it with the template . This template looks like this: 
Please also add WP:LOW to the list of manuals of styles to follow in WP:WIAGA.
:Why? It sounds like something you'd do at the very end of an article's development, not something you'd do just to make it good. This guideline seems to be just to maintain consistancy throughout Wikipedia articles, not to necessarily make each article better than it was before. Homestarmy 15:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Upside-down lists of works

message: Jews are defined as "members of the Jewish people". If you look in WP for Jewish people you get redirected to Jews. So this is a circular non-definition. The other definition given refers to the Israelites article, which is a description of religious beliefs, sourced from the Bible. This qualifies as a Good Article?
:But the article defines (or tries to define) who Jewish people are, that's why its redirected there. Homestarmy 13:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  If this is a [[Good Article]], I'd hate to see a [[Bad Article]] 

message: One of the criteria for good articles is that they have "a fair use rationale." for any non-free image used. It is not demanded that this rationale be, er, "accurate," or that the rationale be acceptable per our fair use policies. Many good articles violate our fair use policies (most of our articles with fair use images do, but that's another problem.) Can we consider changing this? Hipocrite - «Talk» 20:18, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fair use in good articles. 

message: I think we should replace the following:
"(d) necessary technical terms or jargon are briefly explained in the article itself, or an active link is provided."
with the following:
"(d) the article can be understood by any likely reader. Technical terms or jargon necessary to understand the article are defined in it. Technical terms not necessary to understand the article are either defined or hyperlinked to an extant page."
As many people here are no doubt aware, far too many Wikipedia articles are incomprehensible to many readers. This makes them pretty much useless. (The point of an encyclopedia is to tell people things they don't know, so if you can't reach the people who aren't already knowledgeable about the subject, there's no point.) Therefore, I think we need a stronger statement here.
Note that I say the article should be understood by any likely reader. The likely reader of the article on Non-abelian gauge transformation, whatever that is, may be a university physics student, so there's no need to define terms like boson or quark. On the other hand, an article on atoms or molecules may be read by a high school student or an average person with a high school education and little if any background in math or physics. A good article would explain atoms or molecules in a way that such ordinary people can understand them. 
I'm also recommending that we specify that terms that are necessary to know to understand the rest of the article should be defined in the article, not simply wikilinked. There are two reasons for this. One, it's annoying to be sent on a wild goose chase around the encyclopedia to understand each sentence. Also, the articles on technical terms or jargon tend to be more complex and more difficult to understand than the first article. To use atom as an example, it wouldn't make sense to say "An atom is a particle with baryonic nuclei held together by vector gauge bosons surrounded by an atomic orbital." If the reader doesn't know what an atom is, he or she is certainly not going to be able to understand the article on gauge bosons. -- Mwalcoff 00:42, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I realize that your intention is good, but I am not confident that it would improve anything; rather it might another b'cratical addition that will just be disputed. I can imagine the disputes regarding "any likely reader". What's interesting is that a general GA reviewers is perhaps not a likely reader for many article. So I oppose the suggestion; I think the current wording is sufficient, and that details can be worked out on an article basis. / Fred-Chess 07:06, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paragraph 1(d) 

message: I suggest that it is recommended (but not mandatory) that when paintings are used to illustrate an article, a reference is given to the whereabouts of the painting (museum, private collection, etc.), so that interested people can find out more about it and even visit it. I say this because I recently read an article about Marly le Roi in France, illustrated with a painting of the palaces, since demolished. But I found no reference anywhere in Wikipedia that enabled me to find out where the painting could be seen. It seems to me to reasonable and desirable that if a painting is used to illustrate an article, the caption should not only say what it is and who painted it, but also where it is.
DavidLlewellyn 09:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding references to the whereabouts of paintings 

message: I believe the "stable" requirement should read as follows:
"It is stable, i.e. it is not the subject of ongoing edit wars. This does not apply to vandalism and protection or semi-protection as a result of vandalism, or proposals to split or merge the article content."
My firm belief is that editors should spend a few hours in the morning working on an article, and having that article promoted to GA status by that evening. There needs to be a distinct difference between GA and FA; otherwise, we'll have two redundant processes. We should make it so that most established editors can make a GA quickly and efficiently without problems. — Deckiller 23:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have misgivings about this, when articles are being heavily refactored, if they are reviewed while that's still happening, the article as it was when it was reviewed and the article one day later could be very different. Personally, I just ask articles which are being improved dramatically if its about to end any time soon, and if a few more days are needed, I just put it on hold. Homestarmy 15:29, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm more concerned about reviewers who fail articles on stability because most of the work had been done in the last week. GA should not be somewhere where the editors have to wait several days to nominate just to make sure it's "stable", especially if it's on the course of a FA push. That's another problem; we have reviewers who understand that GA is not FA mark two, and then we have reviewers who may actually set higher stnadards than FAC. — Deckiller 16:00, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Any fails in particular you've seen that are problematic? GA/R has a very large backlog right now, but at least we could talk to reviewers who are just failing anything that's even the least bit unstable, or better yet, suggest in the reviewing instructions that articles which are unstable in good faith should more properly be put on hold. Homestarmy 17:43, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing right now, although I've seen at least two previous cases of stability failure on articles I had worked on (I'd rather not name names); the reviewers ended up passing them, but I think we should clarify the stability requirement just to prevent any further issues. — Deckiller 17:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewrite the "stable" requirement

message: There are a couple of articles I've worked on that I felt were probably too short for GA, though I thought they said everything that needed to be said.  Venture Science Fiction Magazine is probably long enough, but how about Space Science Fiction Magazine?  And if there is a lower limit, does it have to do with GA specifically?  I guess it might be the case that if an article is too short for GA, it should be expanded; and if it can't be expanded, it shouldn't exist as a separate article -- it should be merged.  That would imply any completed article, however, short, can reach GA.  Anyway, what's the lower limit, in people's minds? Mike Christie (talk) 23:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If the second article was split into maybe one more section and perhaps one more sentence added onto the lead, I think it could be better justified as WP:LEAD compliant, and it would make it look a bit better too in my opinion. After that, it would indeed seem like a GA to me. What often happens with very short articles is that there's often just a body with no sections, which means according to the MoS definition, there is no lead, since a lead is defined as the first paragraph preceding section headings. (At least, it was the last time I checked) Homestarmy 00:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I second what Homestarmy said, and of course it has to address every significant aspect of the topic. Whenever I review a short article I always do some searching over the internet at least to see if there anything related to the topic that hasn't been addressed. Quadzilla99 23:17, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How short can an article be and still be GA?