Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Newsletter/December 2007

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The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter
Volume I, No. 2 - December 2007

November issue | January issue

Project News
  • There are now 3,134 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.
  • The backlog at Good Article Nominations currently stands at 187 unreviewed articles. Out of 218 total nominations, 18 are on hold, 12 are under review, and one is seeking a second opinion.
The oldest unreviewed articles are: Randall Flagg, Anand (2004 film), Sivaji: The Boss, Cult Awareness Network, The Jeremy Kyle Show, Cell (Dragon Ball), Mythology of Carnivàle, Slay Tracks (1933-1969), The Corrs, and Nguyen Ngoc Tho.
The categories with the largest backlogs are: Music (34 articles), Sports and recreation (34 articles), Television and journalism (23 articles), Film and cinema (16 articles), Geography and places (13 articles), Religion, mysticism, and mythology (12 articles), and Computer and video games (11 articles).
The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 19 articles up for re-review.
If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!
GA Sweeps

Many people don't understand how the sweeps work, or even know its existence! So this issue I'll briefly talk about the purpose of sweeps, as well as how we do them. It was first suggested and created by LaraLove on August 23, 2007. The project aims to check all previously reviewed Good Articles, based on the 2,808 articles classified as GA by August 27, 2007, to ensure that each article continues to meet the current Good Article criteria. Articles promoted after that date will be swept in the next sweeps cycle.

Currently, participation in the sweeps project is by invitation only, as we desire experienced reviewers who have a thorough and extensive knowledge of the criteria. This is to ensure that articles that have "fallen through the cracks" would be found and removed, and that additional articles don't fall through the cracks during the sweep. Currently, there are 14 members working on the project, and we have reviewed 47 articles in August, 163 in September, 146 in October and 45 in November. Of those that are swept, 232 articles are kept as GA, 107 articles are delisted, and 1 promoted to FA.

Reviewer of the Month

Blnguyen is the GAN Reviewer of the Month of November, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 of the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Blnguyen hails from South Australia and has been editing Wikipedia since December 2005. He has written and/or contributed to an astounding number of articles, including seven featured articles, two featured lists, 15 Good articles, and 152 Did You Know? articles.

Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of October include:

Member News

There are now 162 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 12 new members that joined during the month of November:

This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!

ArticleHistory

You may have noticed or read about a talk page template called {{ArticleHistory}}. If you've tried to use it, you may have been surprised by its complexity. So what is this all about? Well, the ArticleHistory template is a way of recording events in the history of an article's development. The idea is to record each time the article passes or fails a Good article nomination, a Good article reassessment, Featured article candidates, or Featured article review. ArticleHistory also tracks a few other things, such as peer review, AfD, appearing on the main page, appearing under did you know?, and other featured processes, such as featured lists and featured topics.

So, how does this affect GA reviewers? Although the template is pretty complicated, using it for GA is not so bad once you get used to it. However, the first piece of advice we would like to give is: if you are not comfortable using ArticleHistory, then just use the usual GA templates ({{GA}}, {{DelistedGA}} and {{FailedGA}}), even if there is already an ArticleHistory template on the talk page. A more experienced GA reviewer will then merge the GA template into the article history later.

On the other hand, the more reviewers that master the ArticleHistory alchemy, the better, so what do you need to know? Well, almost everything can be found in the documentation, so here we just give a summary and a few tips. The main components of the ArticleHistory are:

  • The start of the template. Begin the template with "{{ArticleHistory".
  • A list of numbered events, called actions. Within the template, write "|action# =", and then put the appropriate review action, such as "GAN", "GAR", "FAC", or "FAR".
    • Note: Here, and below, replace the "#" sign in the action variables with a number, starting at "1" for the first (oldest) event, "2" for the second event, and so on (e.g., if you are starting the template for the first time, write "1" here; if there are already action variables for two actions, then you will put "3").
  • For each event, some information about when it ended (the action date), the result of the event (the action result), what the article looked like at the end (the action oldid), and a link to a review (the action link).
    • For the date, write "|action#date = 1 December 2007" within the template. The date should not be wikilinked.
    • For the result, write "|action#result=" followed by the result (e.g. "listed" or "failed" for a good article nomination).
    • For the oldid, write "|action#oldid=". To find the oldid, go to the article's history and click on the version of the article reviewed (after reviewing a nomination or delisting a current GA, this will probably be the most recent version of the article, but that isn't always the case). Look at the URL and you will see &oldid= followed by several numbers; put those numbers after the equals sign.
    • For good article nominations, the action link is optional. For further information, see the template documentation.
  • The current status of the article. Write "|currentstatus=" followed by an acronym describing this status. For example, write "GA" if you have just passed a good article nomination, "FGAN" (short for "failed good article nomination") if you have just failed it, or "DGA" (short for "delisted good article") if you have just delisted a current GA. The list of allowed acronyms can be found in the documentation.
  • The GA topic, such as Arts, Natural sciences, or Everyday life. Write "|topic=" within the template and add the appropriate topic (a complete list of topics can be found in the documentation).
  • The end of the template. Close the template with "}}".

The three most important things to remember when you edit the article history of an article are the following.

  1. Check for errors after your edit: if you have done something wrong then the category ArticleHistory error will appear in bright red at the bottom of the talk page.
  2. The ArticleHistory is not for ongoing events: for example, only add a GAN to the history when it has ended.
  3. The ArticleHistory does not record WikiProject assessments, such as B-Class: so if you fail or delist a GA, use currentstatus=FGAN or currentstatus=DGA, not currentstatus=B.

If you master all this, you can truly call yourself an ArticleHistory Jedi! Good luck!

From the Editor

We are looking for additional participants in the GA Sweeps. Those individuals should have a very strong understanding on good article criteria and all GA processes. Active participation in GA would be a major asset. If you are interested, please leave a message on OhanaUnited's talk page. We thank everyone for their interest, but only individuals selected will be invited to participate in the sweeps.

Contributors to this Issue

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks
This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia.
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