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Good article nominations

This is the discussion page for good article nominations (GAN) and the good articles process in general. To ask a question or start a discussion about the good article nomination process, click the Add topic link above. Please check and see if your question may already be answered; click the link to the FAQ above or search the archives below. If you are here to discuss concerns with a specific review, please consider discussing things with the reviewer first before posting here.

Backlog Drive

May starts in two weeks, and so does our next GAN Backlog Drive. We've already established a theme, so it'll be newbie-oriented. Is anyone willing to coordinate the drive besides me? Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 14:03, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I am happy to help:) DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 20:42, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Pinging our previous coordinators @IntentionallyDense and Ganesha811: to see if they're interested. :) Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 19:22, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm traveling next month so I won't be able to coordinate, but I'll probably participate and do a few reviews! —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:23, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

No worries. Have fun traveling. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 20:32, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Happy to help! I'm not great with the technical stuff but I do like helping newbies. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 19:37, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Good to hear! We'll do our best. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 20:36, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Bless you guys. I nervously remembered I hadn't done anything to set this up a week or so ago but was buried in other stuff, and was then reminded of it again by the watchlist notification. -- asilvering (talk) 23:15, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/May 2025 is up! Please sign up. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 11:04, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I didn't know about this until I heard about it through Wikipedia:Discord. Maybe a notification message should go out? -- Reconrabbit 14:25, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, a MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages watchlist message should go out. —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:27, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I'll request one now. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 15:12, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes I had no idea about this until recently IAWW (talk) 14:28, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Sams Creek mining

I have nominated this article and for reasons explained on its talk page, the article is in draft space. That challenges Christiebot a bit, but I hope it's ok for the reviewer who takes this on. Schwede66 03:24, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Mike Christie, the bot is not coping at all with draft space. Can you think of a hack to overcome that? Schwede66 06:54, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I can think of a couple of possible things you could try.

• If you can find someone in a relevant WikiProject or someone who's worked on similar articles who is willing to work with you on the article, they could move the article to article space, and nominate it; you could still assist with resolving any review questions.
• I'm not clear on the exact nature of the COI, but unless it's stronger than it appears you might decide that it's not strong enough to prevent you from working on the article. On a couple of occasions I've edited articles about people whom I know personally; I've declared the relationship on the articles' talk pages and I don't think it was inappropriate for me to make those edits. You say you could not make any edits at all once the article is out of draft space; if the COI is minor then that might not be true, in which case you could simply move the article from draft space yourself, or wait for someone at AfC to do so, and carry on with the COI declared. If it's truly the case that you cannot make any edits at all to the article in mainspace, then I don't think you should be nominating it at GA -- a nominator must be in a position to respond to the review.
• Technically, I can think of an option that might work given the draft-space approach you are taking, but I don't recommend it and I think we should hear from others before you try this. I think that if you were to create the talk page for the article, but not the article page, the nomination procedure would work. As far as I can recall, the bot does not require the existence of the article page, because it doesn't edit it at all until it tries to apply the GA star if the article is promoted. This would look weird on the GAN page since there would be a redlink for the article, but you could add a note explaining why that is. However, the orphaned talk page would presumably be subject to deletion by admins performing housekeeping. I'm not an admin and am not sure if this approach would break any rules, but it would certainly break some norms, and I doubt it's the right answer.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:24, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Schwede66, articles have to be in mainspace to be eligible for GAN; I have deleted the nomination from the article's talk page because it's in Draftspace. Hacks like moving Draftspace articles temporarily into mainspace to nominate them don't work, and frankly shouldn't be done, while other hacks like creating a talk page for an article that doesn't exist should not be allowed. If the COI is so severe as to prevent mainspace editing of an article, then GAN is, unfortunately, probably not an appropriate process if other editors are not in a position to edit it after the article's move to mainspace and subsequent nomination. Out of curiosity, why has no COI been declared yet on the Draft article? If a conflict exists, it does from the moment the article is initiated. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:58, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, I had a look through the GAN rules and couldn’t find anything about mainspace. Can you please point me to where it says so, BlueMoonset? Now that you say it, you are right that I should have written the COI declaration already. I'll do so.

Thanks for your considered response, Mike Christie. That’s much appreciated. Schwede66 18:09, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

This is not WP:Good article-specific, but WP:What is an article? explicitly states that drafts are not counted as articles. TompaDompa (talk) 19:05, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, TompaDompa! Schwede66 19:49, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Moved to Draft talk:Sams Creek mining#Good article nomination procedure

 – Schwede66 02:29, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

10 Hygiea

Can somebody just unilaterally delist a good article without discussion. Only ask because that's what happened at 10 Hygiea. Nrco0e decided it shouldn't be one, a just delisted it (apparently without any discussion at all). Regards, Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 06:20, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

No, they can't. I've reverted that part of those edits Billsmith60 (talk) 10:46, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Feedback on the GAN Review of Santi Romano

Following on from this discussion, I'd like to get some feedback on the GAN review process and how we can move forward. The review was handled by Pbritti, who took it over in October 2024 but was largely absent for several months, so that the actual review took place over a period of eight days, from 11 to 19 April. During this time, I made significant improvements to the article, often in response to the reviewer's feedback. However, the review was quickly closed with a failure, citing issues that I believe are unfounded or had already been addressed and resolved (see the linked discussion for details).

I find it frustrating that the assessment was made so abruptly, after a long delay caused by the reviewer's unavailability, and on grounds that I consider to be inconsistent and specious. I suspect that the reviewer had little time to devote to the task and, as a result, interrupted a process that was delivering good results. So I'd like to know if this review met the expectations of the GAN process and, most importantly, if another reviewer might be willing to reopen and complete the review. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 23:49, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I have discussed this at length on Talk:Santi Romano, but I will repeat this here: describing me as absent from a review when I handed it off to a second opinion months ago is false—during that time, it was no longer my review. When I got the chance to provide a review earlier this month, I discovered that the article had been submitted with numerous verifiability and copyright issues. At this point, my only regret in this review is that I did not provide the closure afforded by a quick fail in October. To anyone interested in reviewing this article, understand that Gitz's response to me failing the article on egregious issues was to repeatedly accuse me of incompetence. ~ Pbritti (talk) 00:47, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

I've had a quick look-over; personally, I think much of the alleged close paragraphasing (such as this) doesn't come close, and most (not all, but most) of this earwig link is indeed repetitions of non-creative expression, which is fine. Still, quickfailing based on verifiability concerns comes under the discretion of the GA reviewer: in this case, I would just move on and put the article up for another review per WP:GAN/I#N5. Best of luck, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:04, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, @AirshipJungleman29. Pbritti, however, did not fail the review based on verifiability concerns. As you can see from their final opinion, they mentioned portions of the lead ... unsupported by the body (which is undoubtedly mistaken), close paraphrasing (which is questionable and, in my opinion, also mistaken) and instability of the article (which arose entirely from Pbritti's suggestions and my willingness to implement them). There's simply nothing about verifiability.

Some verifiability concerns were raised during the review, but these were either demonstrably unfounded (see The publication date of Principii and its potentially incorrect Italian name, The paragraph on the Marshal position, no attribution of who is speaking in this quote, attempt to moderate its more extreme tendencies and relatively detached and uncommitted public profile) or quickly addressed (namely, two "citation needed" tags). For this reason, Pbritti's final opinion contains no mention of verifiability issues: there are none.

However, after I raised my concerns about Pbritti's rushed and incomplete review, they began to claim that This article was submitted with multiple unsourced statements, several failed Vs and (in their comment here above) numerous verifiability ... issues – claims that I believe to be completely false and specious. Santi Romano is fully verifiable.

@Pbritti Re Gitz's response ... was to repeatedly accuse me of incompetence, I did not accuse you of incompetence, but I asked you to substantiate your judgement so that others could assess your competence (here) and I claimed that you had delivered an incompetent review (here). I understand this may be upsetting, but I'm not interested at all in evaluating your competence as a reviewer but rather in understanding whether your review was OK and, if not, what should be done about it. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 09:46, 22 April 2025 (UTC); edited 10:20, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Gitz6666, AirshipJungleman29 is right that the best response is just to submit it to GAN again. I haven't gone through the review to see whether I agree with Pbritti's assessment, but it wouldn't matter unless they were simply not using the GA criteria -- the reviewer gets to decide the outcome of the review, per the instructions. That's both a strength and (occasionally) a weakness of the GA process. If I were to look at the article and decide it should have passed GA, I'd still say your next step would be to renominate. I agree that waiting eight months for this is frustrating, but that's why we have backlog drives -- see further up this page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:00, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mike Christie, please correct me if I'm wrong: WP:GAN/I#N5 encourages editors to seek additional input if they feel they haven't received an adequate review. Arguably, this input would be meaningless if the only option were to resubmit the article to GAN. So, if a review appears inadequate — for example, if it mentions the GA criteria but misapplies them — it would not be consistent with WP:GAN/I#N5 to start the process from scratch. On the adequacy of this review, please see my comment here.

Note that Pbritti asked for a second opinion months ago, but unfortunately their request was never acted upon; an editor offered to step in, but ultimately nothing came of it. In my view, the best outcome here would be for an experienced editor to provide the second opinion that was requested but never materialised. My practical concern is that if I were to start the process all over again, I might lose touch with the subject and its many complex sources over the next few months. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 14:55, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

You have received "additional input" which suggests that the review, while harsh, was adequate. Failing a review with reference to the criteria is the prerogative of the reviewer. There have been many other requests for input at this page which have concluded that the review was inadequate and should be reopened. That is not the case here. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:35, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

I think you will need to add to add a nomination note that the reviewer needs to speak Italian, otherwise the concerns of the previous review will not be able to be addressed. Specific foreign language speaking GA reviewers are pretty hard to come by, which is probably why the second opinion request took so long to answer. Consider reaching out to someone who could review via talk pages, though I'm not sure if this would violate Wikipedia:Canvassing or another policy? IAWW (talk) 19:27, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

It's only canvassing if the notification is non-neutral and/or implies there's an expectation that the person being messaged will pass the article no matter what. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:53, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

@It is a wonderful world, you're right, verifying citations from Italian sources can be tricky. I understand that, and I've also taken WP:NONENG into account, but about half of the sources are in Italian and the article would be significantly worse without them. However, I can provide verbatim quotes and English translations for almost all of them, as I've already done whenever a verification concern has been raised (1, 2, 3, 4). I'd do my best to make the second reviewer's task as easy and productive as possible. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:23, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

GA Review box behaviour

New topics are being added to GA Review box on Talk:Wordle (see this and this). What's missing? Thank you, Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:19, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

The template on the GAN wasn't closed, I've added a closing template. CMD (talk) 14:32, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:36, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

GA review did not count

Yesterday, I failed the article Life Till Bones. However, it is still showing up on the album nominations page, does not show up in Toolforge, and my review count has not gone up. I reviewed it normally; I hit start review and failed it, following the typical instructions. What is causing this? Locust member (talk) 18:27, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

The bot isn't updating WP:GAN currently. Cos ^{(X + Z)} 20:23, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I'll take a look at the bot's log when I get a moment; tonight, I hope. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:05, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I think this edit should fix it; the next time the bot tries to update GAN it should work. The problem was the user signature, which had a user space link to a subpage instead of the main userpage as the first link. EF5, ChristieBot currently can't handle your signature -- you don't have to change it, but if you nominate any other articles, would you change the nominator parameter in the nomination template to a simple link to your user page? I'll take a look at handling this situation a bit more gracefully as soon as I can, but the basic issue is that the bot has to use whatever is in that parameter as the name of the nominator, and it can't always easily tell which of multiple links in a signature is the right one. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:36, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

I've now updated the bot so it will not crash when this happens, but it won't correctly identify the nominator. This is what the result would look like if the nominator parameter has this issue: the nomination for EF5 drought gives the nominator incorrectly, which will screw up the stats for users who have this sort of link in the nominator parameter. I'll put this on my list to fix but it will take longer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:14, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks for fixing it. Enjoy the drought article. :) — EF5 ^(questions?) 15:21, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Help

It's many years since I nominated a GAN, and I might have made an error. I'm trying to nominate Caerleon pipe burial, and I left the subtopic blank since nothing seemed appropriate, but that seems to have sent it into limbo, can't see it at Miscellaneous or anywhere else. Thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:21, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

It's in Miscellaneous now. Sometimes it takes a bit to update. CMD (talk) 13:38, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

CMD, thanks. As I said, it's been a long time since I posted on GAN Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:43, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 28 April 2025

In my GAN (1992 Flores earthquake and tsunami) in Earth Sciences in Natural Sciences, can someone make it known that I will be self-blocked until May 30 due to school stuff? WFUM🔥🌪️ (talk) 18:58, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Wildfireupdateman, you can add a note to your nomination under the "|note=" parameter at Talk:1992 Flores earthquake and tsunami. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 19:00, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added a note to the talk page.WFUM🔥🌪️ (talk) 19:12, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Evaluation of the copyediting criteria

Looking over GAN reviews, many tend to be dominated by long lists of copyediting nitpicks. Under the GA criteria, the only copyediting issues that should be evaluated in a GAN review are:

• Whether there are any parts of the article that are unclear
• Whether the article is concise
• Whether the article complies with Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable
• Whether there are any spelling or grammar errors in the article

Excessively detailed copyedits have become a major contributor to scope creep at GAN. It increases the overall time for the reviewer to check the article and the nominator to respond to the reviewer's concerns. If reviewers feel there are copyediting fixes to be made beyond the listed issues above, I encourage them to do so through the normal editing process, to list the other issues they noted separately in the review as "additional suggestions outside of the GA criteria", or even to fix things as they review if they're minor non-controversial changes. I also encourage nominators not to feel like they're obligated to write perfect FA-level prose if the article already meets the listed standards above. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 18:59, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I second that reviewers should clearly delineate the points not relevant to GA, and encouraging a much more hands on approach. Maybe these should be added to the GA reviewing instructions? However, I find ironing out all the grammar errors is normally one of the biggest if not the biggest time consumer in GAN reviews. Fixing dangling modifiers, WP:CINS mistakes and unclear sentences normally contribute a lot to the "long lists" of prose points. Sure, these could all be fixed directly by the reviewer, but then nominators are more likely to make the same mistakes in the future which leads to even longer review times. I think making articles fully grammatically correct is just a big job a lot of the time, and there is no way to avoid it. IAWW (talk) 20:20, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

To a certain extent I think we're overly-focused at GA on perfect rather than understandable grammar. If the error makes part of an article unclear in some way, it's worth pointing out. Otherwise, I honestly don't know that it matters at the GA (rather than FAC) level whether the commas are perfectly placed (or other minor errors of precision rather than clarity), so long as it's reasonably, well, readable for the reader. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:14, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm new looking at the GA project, so take this as the opinion of a newb. I just got through my first GA review (took a LONG time, largely my fault but there was a few issues that popped up with reviewers) on the article for Technical geography. I was looking at the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria and honestly I'm not sure I can tell the difference between what I'd expect from FA and what I experienced with GA review. I'm honestly not sure what the difference is between the article types at this point. Would be nice to see clearer differentiation between them. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 23:10, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

@GeogSage, if you can't tell the difference, sounds like your GA review was unusually harsh. -- asilvering (talk) 23:21, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to say that exactly, Talk:Technical geography still has them visible if you'd like to judge. One reviewer got banned mid review, and I had a move/new job that really delayed my response to the second one, so they took FOREVER. That said, looking at the feedback and what I changed, I'm not sure how much a FA review would do differently based on the criteria I read. I'm hesitant to nominate that article until I have more time to dedicate to a project like that though. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 23:25, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, at a glance, Talk:Technical geography/GA1 seems unnecessarily nitpicky and time-consuming. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:40, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I have to scroll to reach the end of the table of contents. Hard luck, @GeogSage. This was definitely not normal. -- asilvering (talk) 23:53, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I've said before that we should be screening reviews, especially from new reviewers. That was in the context of them being too light, but perhaps we should also be nudging people who make their reviews too heavy. The former hurts the process in making the ratings less accurate, while the latter hurts the process by making it difficult to go through. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:01, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Sounds like you should sign up for next month's backlog drive! -- asilvering (talk) 00:34, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Agree wholeheartedly. Drives me batty when reviewers ask for changes that take longer for them to write out than it would for them to fix. -- asilvering (talk) 23:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I think some reviewers are (perhaps unnecessarily) afraid to make changes themselves. They may be concerned about crossing the line into being a major contributor and thus too involved to review; I also think some may be worried about stepping on the nominator's toes. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:26, 28 April 2025 (UTC)