Wikipedia talk:Nominating good articles

Started guide

I have created a guide with input from other reviewers, and hope that it will be helpful for new nominators. Feel free to expand or correct information as necessary, and if any large changes are suggested, bring them up here for consensus. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 08:13, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Where the ref tag belongs

I have two problems with this edit. The first is that it pretends that the only real "inline citation" is the one that uses <ref> tags, which is false: parenthetical references are also inline references. This is a common (but sloppy) problem.

The bigger problem is that it directly contradicts the actual, widely accepted style guideline, which says that editors are allowed to put the footnote wherever they choose with respect to punctuation, even if it's not the One True™ Location.

This essay should not directly contradict a widely accepted style guideline (even though I personally prefer the style described in this page), which means that this false "rule" about the location of the footnote and the absence of intervening spaces must be removed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe it says anywhere that Harvard referencing can't be used. The <ref> citations are more complicated to format compared to the parenthetical references. When the majority of the articles on Wikipedia use the <ref> citations, there's going to be more details on how to format the citations so that there is consistency throughout the article. Like I said in the edit summary, the footnote within the WP:REFPUNC guideline states that placing a reference before the punctuation (ex. ...word[1].) is the improper way of doing so (the page's footnote says "This footnote is used as an example of incorrect placement in the "Ref tags and punctuation" section."). I'm not so sure why it calls it an "alternate placement" (perhaps that needs to be discussed on the guideline page). As a side note this essay was first started in February 28, 2008, and at the time there was no mention of this alternate method. That is a good idea though with the "™" copyright tag, it would help it to catch on a little more! Out of curiosity, are you saying the entire guideline is widely accepted or just this section, because I don't believe I've seen any FAs use the alternate method. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:43, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

1. In this section, we need to differentiate here between inline refs (a broad concept) and the smaller subset of inline refs that use the <ref> tags. This is easily done with phrases like Inline citations that use ref tags instead of just Inline citations. (Think in terms of a variant on Murphy's law here: If text can be misunderstood, it will be misunderstood, and generally in the most inconvenient way possible.)
2. I've asked at WP:REFPUNC's talk page for them to sort out the contradiction in the section. On the date you give above, the section was at WP:CITE (see here), did not have "correct" and "incorrect" examples, and had text very similar to what it has now.

(I hope that the "alternate" placement is rare, simply because I personally don't happen to like it. But the WP:CITE group of guidelines are pretty firm about avoiding holy wars over citation styles, and this waffle is doubtless yet another example of that.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

That sounds good for clarifying for readers that may be confused by the wording. I'll keep an eye on the discussion there, thanks for the heads up. I was interested in you'd seen it used anywhere, because I haven't. I'm sure the majority of editors call for the first method and usually request the article switch during GAN/PR/FAC. I'd figure that conformity would be important for the location of the citation, but articles be open to whichever citation style is preferred. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 05:04, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

WildBot tagging

I'd like suggest that a GA nominee should have {{User:WildBot/tag}} added to it's talk page per User:WildBot#Can WildBot check a page for me?; at the moment, WildBot checks for links to disambiguation pages and broken #section links. As time goes on, more checks will be added to WildBot. Josh Parris 11:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Since Wildbot is really long dead this can't be "tagged" as "resolved". mabdul 17:55, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Instability

I have two questions about this criterion for GA nominations:

1. For how long does an article have to be stable to pass the GA test? Stable for the past week? Past month?
2. The first step in nominating an article for GA status is to prepare the article by making improvements, but does making significant improvements (e.g., reorganization, adding significant content) in preparation for GA nomination make the article "unstable"?

I would appreciate any guidance. Thanks. Barryjjoyce (talk) 12:37, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 6 November 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. Unopposed for over a week. Jenks24 (talk) 01:44, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Guide for nominating good articles → Wikipedia:Nominating good articles – Consistent with guideline title Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles. Prhartcom (talk) 04:24, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Lists have their use in GA nominations

User:Nehrams2020 User:WhatamIdoing Section "Brief fixes" of this essay states as its last instruction: "Lists should only be included if they can't be made into prose or their own article." This is plainly wrong and is very damaging and misleading for new editors. It gives the impression that lists should be avoided in Wikipedia articles. MOS:LISTS does not say so. There are quite obviously good and bad uses of lists. Printed encyclopedias avoid lists for reasons of lack of space. This reason does not apply in Wikipedia. There are many obvious good uses of lists. The list of works (see MOS:LISTSOFWORKS) is perhaps the best known and best accepted. Most biographies of authors include such a list. Short timelines and lists of children or siblings in biographies are other valid examples and there are many more. Please urgently remove this dangerous instruction from the essay. Thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 17:25, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Hello, @Johannes Schade. A list of works is a good example of one that "can't be made into prose", especially if the list contains more information than "He wrote three books: A, B, and C".

Lists of children and siblings are usually written in plain sentences. For example, Frederick the Great is a Featured Article and contains no lists at all until the last section, which is a list of works written by the subject, and he had nine siblings. The use of a numbered list in Charles MacCarthy, 1st Viscount Muskerry#First marriage and children is definitely wrong. Did you have any specific examples in mind? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:26, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Dear User:WhatamIdoing. Thank you so much for your reply. I think any list can be made into prose if you absolutely want, but we agree that lists of works are better presented as lists, probably because of the long bibliographical descriptions (all in the same format) would be annoying in prose. Thanks for pointing to Frederick the Great, a very good recent FA. He had no children. The treatment of his siblings is adequate. His siblings are also found in a huge table in his father's (Frederick William II of Prussia) article. There are FAs with tables of children: e.g. Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough and William IV. Lists of children seem to be rare in FAs and GAs. I could not find any among the FAs I looked at. Among GAs I found Philip III of France, nominated by User:Kansas Bear and reviewed by User:Gog the Mild in 2020. There are plenty of lists of children in ordinary articles e.g. Louise, Princess Royal. I do not understand why you say "The use of a numbered list in Charles MacCarthy, 1st Viscount Muskerry#First marriage and children is definitely wrong." Is it because there are only two sons? Thanks for your time and patience. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 11:15, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

The numbered list is wrong because it's an obvious violation of MOS:NUMLIST. The numbers themselves have no meaning to the article.

What the MacCarthy article currently says is:

Charles and Margaret had two sons:

1. Cormac, probably intellectually disabled, died young predeceasing his father
2. Donough (1594–1665), 1st viscount of Muskerry and 2nd earl of Clancarty

Why is this not written in ordinary sentences?

"Charles and Margaret had two sons. The eldest was Cormac, who was probably intellectually disabled. He died young, while his father was still alive. The younger son was Donough (1594–1665), who became the 1st viscount of Muskerry and the 2nd earl of Clancarty."

I also encourage you to consider WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. If you look long enough, it is not difficult to find articles that do not follow our best practices. I still recommend that you follow the best practices, and not the poor examples. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:34, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Dear User:WhatamIdoing. Thank you so much for still talking to me. Thanks for pointing me to MOS:NUMLIST. It says "Use a numbered (ordered) list only if any of the following apply:" ... "the sequence of the items is critical": Cormac came 1st and then Donough. The numbering also has "independent meaning": Cormac is the 1st son and Donough the 2nd. So I would think the list complies. Admittedly, as you point out, the list could have been written in prose. I wrote it as a list because the daughters are in a list and I wanted to maintain parallelism between the sons and the daughters. With regard to "other stuff exists" you are of course right: one can find odd stuff in Wikipedia if one searches long enough. However, Philip III of France is not a "poor example". It has some weight as it was reviewed by a famous Wikipedian. I still doubt that it is good practice to transform all lists "that can be made into prose" and that this should be a "brief fix". Newbies will confuse a brief fix with a quick fix and (as said) all lists can be made into prose. Should your essay not rather say "lists should be made into prose if this improves the flow and readability" or something like that (I am sure you could formulate this better). With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 10:05, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

The sequence of the sons' births is not critical, because Cormac predeceased his father. At the time of the father's death, there was only one son surviving, so the birth order was irrelevant.

The list about the daughters could also be converted into prose. IMO this is a "brief fix". It didn't take me very long to turn the first list into prose, so it shouldn't take very long to do the second.

By the way, Wikipedia:WikiProject British Royalty/Style guide#Issue suggests creating a table rather than a list. I don't know whether any other groups have made any suggestions on this point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:22, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Dear User:WhatamIdoing. Thanks for your interesting comments, especially the WikiProject British Royalty/Style guide, mainly written by User:DBD in 2007. It seems that most articles on British royalty comply with it but not all. The FAs James VI and I and Charles II of England have sections called "Issue" at the prescribed position in the layout, but they hold lists instead of tables. The FAs George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of Great Britain, and William IV have tables of children as prescribed. I am used to put children into the section for the corresponding marriage. Is that wrong? – There is of course MOS:BIO It does not seem to mention the treatment of a subjects' children but mentions a possible list of people and gives an example of such a list in the section "Birth date and place". This example is a bulleteddotted unordered list with names and lifespans. MOS:BIO also mentions the possibility of a "list of family members" in the section "People with the same surname". With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 19:39, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

To be fair, the BRoy style guide was written absolutely ages ago, I don't remember whether anyone else had significant input, and it's not been revisited since. I'm not sure how necessary it is to edit this essay (Wikipedia:Nominating good articles), because it hasn't much force. The MOS has enough to say about lists within non-list articles, and that has much greater authority. DBD 20:09, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Dear User:DBD. Thank you so much for your input that cleared away I misconception I harboured. You call WP:BROY SG an essay. I had confused "guides" (style guide) with "Wikipedia guidelines" (Wikipedia style guideline) and thought it was considered vetted and recommended good usage by Wikipedia. I see now that only the guides in the categories WIKIPEDIA POLICIES and WIKIPEDIA GUIDELINES are in that case. That does of course not mean that essays are useless. They are usually interesting and worthy of consideration, just that they have less authority than a guideline. Nevertheless, it would have helped me if WP:BROY SG had been marked with TEMPLATE:ESSAY. Perhaps you could do this. With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 09:49, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I see now my phrasing was ambiguous: by "this essay", I mean Wikipedia:Nominating good articles. (I have edited the above to reflect my intention.) DBD 10:00, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

BROY's style guide is technically one of the Wikipedia:WikiProject advice pages. It is not "official", but they are usually written by people who are very familiar with the specific subject matter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Dear User:WhatamIdoing and Dear User:DBD. Do you feel I have lacked respect (WP:CIVILITY)? I did not intend to do so and apologise abjectly. You are two eminent Wikipedians while I simply lack experience and have made many mistakes and misunderstood you several times. I do not doubt the superiority of your expertise. If I understand this game right, my attempt to change the style guide "Nominating Good Articles" failed and I am beaten off 2:1. I still feel the mentioned style guide encourages first-time GA nominators to replace all lists with prose as all lists can be changed into prose, and that there are cases in which such replacements do not improve the GA candidate. However, I seem to be wrong and admit defeat. With many thanks for your discussion, best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 05:40, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

IMO you are correct: whatever advice we give, it might be misunderstood by some editors.

As you say, someone could turn even a list of 100 items into a very long sentence, but I hope that nobody ever will. On the other hand, when we look at encyclopedia articles, we want to see paragraphs, and not wonder if the contents would be more comfortable in a PowerPoint-style slide deck. Editors must use some common sense and good judgement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:09, 24 July 2022 (UTC)