Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 2

message: I know it's been shut down before, but couldn't we try filing the nominations under headers? Not each individual category, the major broad ones, or we could even group the smaller ones. If we did that then people could find nominations on certain topics easier, and we might get quicker/more reviews. For example, I can't bear an article on Atom splicing in astro physics, but I'd enjoy reviewing a music article instead. It's just an idea, flame away Highway Rainbow Sneakers 16:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I wouldn't mind that at all I don't think.  Maybe we could try splitting into science, arts and humanities at first and see what we think?  I'd review the atom splicing article but probably not the music :)  Worldtraveller 19:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can we do that.. like now (or verrry fast) because we're getting close to about 50 articles.. which is a LOT. Could some be bold? Highway Rainbow Sneakers 20:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done! The sections are: Sciences, History (merging with Arts), Arts, Humanities and  Geography. Hopefully this will cut down on build up. Highway Rainbow Sneakers 21:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Everything is fixed, dates organized, Art and Histoire merged, I've changed the instructions and I've managed to make the web link jump to each sub header. Let's hope it works, Highway Rainbow Sneakers 21:18, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

text: These four categories are workable. But, a note explaining where some subtopics fit could be helpful. Or, perhaps an edit to the cateogories. I see social science articles under both science and humanities.  Hence, I lengthened the title of "Humanities" to "Humanties and Social Sciences". I also think that it is a good idea to add Technology to Science and so will do that. What do you think? -- Vir 00:34, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I included maths with the science and technology - though we don't seem to be getting many maths articles full stop! TheGrappler 00:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this list needs subcategories because it is easier to find information in smaller chunks. More that 20 items becomes a bit difficult to scan quickly -- especially for those with tired or worn out (by age) eyes (and brain). Eventually, as the nomination list grows, we may need at least 2 identical top levels of category structure on the nomination and good article pages. I tweaked your edits. Media, arts and sport --> Arts and media.  Sports go best with society under Humanities, society & social science, I think. -- Vir 00:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense... if I was nominating a university now, though, I wouldn't know where to put it, and if I was nominating a sports player, it's not obvious to put them under society. I might just make that slightly clearer without changing the way things are split up. I liked the way the single list made it dead easy to nominate stuff, now it's kinda hard for several topics. I don't think the noms list will grow. Historically it's generally oscillated between about 20 and about 60. I think it tends to go down rapidly at weekends, for instance. Basically, the number of reviewers has tended to grow with the number of nominators, and (especially since they are often the same people) nominations often dry up once people are busy reviewing their way through a queue. I've certainly seen no evidence that the list will ever spiral out of control! TheGrappler 01:05, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is early on in the life of the GA list and Wikipedia too. It seems possible that the number of good article candidates will increase 10x and even a 100x over the coming years. Consider: In what pace will Wikipedia move from quality in almost 2000 articles to quality in 20,000 and then 100,000 and more articles.  It will could do so by involving ever more editors increasing the depth of the stream of good quality articles. As for specifying society -- I was thinking of a footnote.  Putting some key topics in parens is good idea. I'll build on that. --Vir 01:55, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  By specifying society (as economy, education, family, history, language, law, politics, religion, sports, war) it becomes clear that society includes most everything (including the institutions of the sciences and arts), as society is a universal term for human institutions.  So, the question comes up then: should Humanities (along with language, law, and religion) ---> Arts & Humanities (instead of Arts and Media)?  I could live with that. We would then have the categories below (back to first level): -- Vir 02:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

text: On inspection, the above seem much preferable to both a single word structure and to the current front page category structure, with humanities, social science & society being ungainly, that I'm going to include the above in one more iteration of polishing these categories. -- Vir 02:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: War is in social sciences and society, but history is in arts and humanities... seems a little odd! But at least now I think it is more obvious where stuff goes. What about language and linguistics? Society I guess... my big problem with this is that previously it was dead easy to nominate something. I appreciate that stuff is going to grow tremendously in the long term (by and large I've been responsible for adapting and breaking down the featured article subsections at WP:GA-it is really hard to break stuff down logically) but I think that we need to make this system as easy as possible for the casual user. If it's going to be tough on anybody, it ought to be the reviewers not the nominators (especially true since at the moment we could do with finding more GAs and the review queue is still well under control... in future, more concentration will have to be on purging the list for quality control rather than just adding to it). Looking through a list to spot if there's anything interesting to you doesn't add a lot to a reviewer's workload, especially if you start combing at the top of the list (there's no need to look through all 50 or so nominations). On the other hand, I can see this nominations system becoming seriously offputting to people coming across WP:GA for the first time. TheGrappler 03:05, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, perhaps people could enter new suggestions under a category titled "new nomination" (instead of "miscellaneous"). I made that edit and moved it to the top.  With this structure, someone can come along and easily drop in a nomination. Then, someone else can categorize new nominations later. (I bet there would be volunteers.)  This gives a three step process: nominate; sort; review.  That way it is more easy on nominators and reviewers (with "tired" eyes and slow brains). It will be easier to categorize articles later. This will especially be the case as article voluem goes up and when the 2nd level of 20-someting categories go in.  Regarding categories: Humanities are an eclectic category that seems somewhat arbitrary. But, this is not entirely so. History is both a humanity and social science -- sometimes history is narrative and sometimes it is more analytic in social science mode.  Languages are organic cultural phenomena that really belong in the humanities.  Linguistics is a social science.  Law sometimes is put in humanities, but it probably belongs more in society. Philosophy should be over in society.  The french do it better: They have the human sciences. The above are not entirely arbitrary distinctions.  Social phenomena are both consciously subjectively lived and objectively analyzable.  A category system needs to be sensitive to these distinctions (but not to the point of obsession, especially in a context like this one). But, it doesn't hurt to have a well designed category system and a helpful way to use it in place early on. Ps. I went ahead and moved history to society as well -- it really fits better there. I added literature to the arts category, computing to the natural science and tech subcategories (dropping applied sciences), and made earth sciences subcategories.  I referred to the categories on the GA page while doing this. --Vir 04:20, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've no strong feelings either way for the new category system. However I'd just like to note that when making changes to this, editors need to remember to keep the section number up to date within the Your addition here link. Cheers. SeanMack 08:12, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If the what was towards my point - I meant these: your addition here. The section number in the url needs to match the actual section number. If new categories are added or removed this is relevant... your addition here SeanMack 10:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

text: What? Anyway, "History" should be in Arts because you can become a "Bachelor of the Arts in History" and I personally think that "War" is part of History because most wars are ancient. We could move History and War to Arts (but only as History) and add Military to Society. Thoughts? Highway Rainbow Sneakers 09:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I would put it in Arts because I think there's a Bachelor of Psychology.. otherwise I think it would go in society. Highway Rainbow Sneakers 16:04, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Psychology is a social science and should stay in that category.  History is part liberal art and part social science, so it can go wherever. I an thinking that geography and history should go together -- for three reasons. 1. They are "indexical" bodies of knowledge -- they locate society and people in the world, one in space and the other in time. 2. Historical and geographical "holistic" methods that are used in the natural sciences, social sciences and liberal arts. 3. I created a collection of basic category sets that groups history and geography together and I think combining the two works well in various categorization contexts see: Category sets. So, I'm going to make that revision. Wonder what people think? --Vir 14:39, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organization 

message: *Arts and humanities (history, language, law, media, philosophy, religion)
*Earth sciences and geography
*Natural sciences and technology (applied sciences, engineering, mathematics, medicine, transportation)
*Social sciences and society (economy, education, family, politics, sports, war)
I think these are more balanced and inclusive. These could actually serve as top level categories on the GA page as well. What do you all think? -- Vir 02:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: On inspection, the above seem much preferable to both a single word structure and to the current front page category structure, with humanities, social science & society being ungainly, that I'm going to include the above in one more iteration of polishing these categories. -- Vir 02:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: War is in social sciences and society, but history is in arts and humanities... seems a little odd! But at least now I think it is more obvious where stuff goes. What about language and linguistics? Society I guess... my big problem with this is that previously it was dead easy to nominate something. I appreciate that stuff is going to grow tremendously in the long term (by and large I've been responsible for adapting and breaking down the featured article subsections at WP:GA-it is really hard to break stuff down logically) but I think that we need to make this system as easy as possible for the casual user. If it's going to be tough on anybody, it ought to be the reviewers not the nominators (especially true since at the moment we could do with finding more GAs and the review queue is still well under control... in future, more concentration will have to be on purging the list for quality control rather than just adding to it). Looking through a list to spot if there's anything interesting to you doesn't add a lot to a reviewer's workload, especially if you start combing at the top of the list (there's no need to look through all 50 or so nominations). On the other hand, I can see this nominations system becoming seriously offputting to people coming across WP:GA for the first time. TheGrappler 03:05, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, perhaps people could enter new suggestions under a category titled "new nomination" (instead of "miscellaneous"). I made that edit and moved it to the top.  With this structure, someone can come along and easily drop in a nomination. Then, someone else can categorize new nominations later. (I bet there would be volunteers.)  This gives a three step process: nominate; sort; review.  That way it is more easy on nominators and reviewers (with "tired" eyes and slow brains). It will be easier to categorize articles later. This will especially be the case as article voluem goes up and when the 2nd level of 20-someting categories go in.  Regarding categories: Humanities are an eclectic category that seems somewhat arbitrary. But, this is not entirely so. History is both a humanity and social science -- sometimes history is narrative and sometimes it is more analytic in social science mode.  Languages are organic cultural phenomena that really belong in the humanities.  Linguistics is a social science.  Law sometimes is put in humanities, but it probably belongs more in society. Philosophy should be over in society.  The french do it better: They have the human sciences. The above are not entirely arbitrary distinctions.  Social phenomena are both consciously subjectively lived and objectively analyzable.  A category system needs to be sensitive to these distinctions (but not to the point of obsession, especially in a context like this one). But, it doesn't hurt to have a well designed category system and a helpful way to use it in place early on. Ps. I went ahead and moved history to society as well -- it really fits better there. I added literature to the arts category, computing to the natural science and tech subcategories (dropping applied sciences), and made earth sciences subcategories.  I referred to the categories on the GA page while doing this. --Vir 04:20, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've no strong feelings either way for the new category system. However I'd just like to note that when making changes to this, editors need to remember to keep the section number up to date within the Your addition here link. Cheers. SeanMack 08:12, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If the what was towards my point - I meant these: your addition here. The section number in the url needs to match the actual section number. If new categories are added or removed this is relevant... your addition here SeanMack 10:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

text: What? Anyway, "History" should be in Arts because you can become a "Bachelor of the Arts in History" and I personally think that "War" is part of History because most wars are ancient. We could move History and War to Arts (but only as History) and add Military to Society. Thoughts? Highway Rainbow Sneakers 09:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I would put it in Arts because I think there's a Bachelor of Psychology.. otherwise I think it would go in society. Highway Rainbow Sneakers 16:04, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Psychology is a social science and should stay in that category.  History is part liberal art and part social science, so it can go wherever. I an thinking that geography and history should go together -- for three reasons. 1. They are "indexical" bodies of knowledge -- they locate society and people in the world, one in space and the other in time. 2. Historical and geographical "holistic" methods that are used in the natural sciences, social sciences and liberal arts. 3. I created a collection of basic category sets that groups history and geography together and I think combining the two works well in various categorization contexts see: Category sets. So, I'm going to make that revision. Wonder what people think? --Vir 14:39, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed top level categories 

message: Recently, despite the length of the lists, articles at the top haven't had much of a lag, suggesting that the review system is working well even for "tough to review" articles (a situation some had feared when we were experimenting with auto-promotion after a time limit). However, there have still been some suggestions (see above) that at least in some cases, more than one person should get involved in making a review. What would make sense to me is for a reviewer who finds a case borderline (and therefore might not want to make a decision on that article) to take the article to the the disputes page and get some more feedback there - as it is, that page works a lot like a "review" page anyway. It might be a good place to send exceptionally borderline cases if you want more input while making a decision. Any thoughts? TheGrappler 22:44, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's more n00bs and anons promoting difficult articles more than them being easy which is kinda worrrying.. If I have a difficult article, or want one reviewed again for any reason (they come up), I normally ask another reviewer to review it, which is normaly CorbinSimpson. An idea is that everyone could get a review partner to deal with stuff like that. We could also have a fortnightly/monthly FAC style thing and we could tackle all the hard GAs together. It's not what we want I know, but it is a good way to deal with the tough cases, Highway Rainbow Sneakers 23:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally I don't think one person reviews are effective for longer articles (say 15-20kb or more).  I'd prefer it if we didn't handle them at all, rather than getting into a more complicated review system.  If an article warrants being 20kb or more long, it really deserves the more rigorous reviewing of an FAC, I reckon.  Worldtraveller 17:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Or you could send it to me. :P By the way, how can you find out the length of an article in KB? Highway Rainbow Sneakers 17:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Difficult reviews 

message: History is part liberal art and part social science. So is Geography (which includes human geography). I think that geography and history should go together in a top category, for three reasons. 1. They are "indexical" bodies of knowledge -- they locate society and people in the world, one in space and the other in time. 2. Historical and geographical "holistic" methods are used in the natural sciences, social sciences and liberal arts. 3. I created a collection of basic category sets that groups history and geography together and I think combining the two works well in some well-balanced categorization contexts, see: Category sets. Please see link if you have criticisms. So, I made that revision. Two other benefits of this is it makes the society list shorter and, by including history as part of a top level category (which it deserves even at 4 basic categories), this avoids the unresolvable debate about whether history belongs with the arts or the social sciences (since it is both). --Vir 14:47, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geography and history 

message: I wonder on what grounds things can be removed as GA?  I have worked pretty hard on the article Richard Francis Burton and it was given GA status a few days ago and then this was removed a few days later on grounds I consider pretty dubious (see the talk page) -- including the claim that some sentences I wrote myself "I'm afraid such pasages have been copied directly from some biographies without even editorializing."  --Richard Clegg 00:32, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure, by the fact they never tagged it as a delisted.. I wouldn't trust it too much. If you put it back up for nominations and it passes again we'll leave a note saying it passed twice and not to delist it without proper reasoning. Highway Rainbow Sneakers 10:37, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of GA nominations 

message: What's the procedure for lists. Can the GA be given to them? savidan(talk) (e@) 11:56, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you try going to Featured Lists first? Right now the only list on GA is List of Mega Man weapons, which is entirely prose; not a list in the traditional Wiki sense. Nifboy 15:27, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I can see, any "true list" meeting WP:WIAGA actually is likely to meet the featured list criteria, so long as it is tidied up a little! TheGrappler 17:25, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Well-written and cited historical timelines (basically lists of events in paragraph form) would definitely qualify for good article (as well as Featured List). Davodd 00:54, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about something like List of Catholic American entertainers? It's fully sourced, at the very least. Mad Jack O'Lantern 01:01, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For something like that, I would suggest a little more context in the prose as to what the quotes are from and to maybe tablize it - with the inclusion of relevant photos of each person. -Davodd 09:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm... good ideas. I might just do that. Mad Jack O'Lantern 17:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lists 

message: DO NOT add articles with curse words to the good articles list!!!—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 879(CoDe) (talk • contribs) .
Right... spam. Highway Rainbow Sneakers 22:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Curse Words