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RfC: change GA criteria to require inline citations in all cases

I propose that criterion 2(b) of the good article criteria should be changed from

all inline citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counterintuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines

to

reliable sources are cited inline. All content, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:48, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Support

• Support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:48, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support, criteria should show the actual current expectations. —Kusma (talk) 10:54, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  In my view the proposal does not mean WP:BLUE would no longer apply to GAs. If this is unclear, I would not oppose a clarifying addition. "Likely to be challenged or contentious" stopped being the standard for material needing citations years ago (both at GA and elsewhere), we should not pretend it still is descriptive of current practice. —Kusma (talk) 19:57, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support This is the appropriate thing to do from both a descriptive and prescriptive perspective—these are the current standards, and so they should be. TompaDompa (talk) 12:25, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support, this is a change reflecting already-existing practice. The proposed wording is a simple transference of the existing criteria at WP:DYK. CMD (talk) 13:49, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support per CMD. Ajpolino (talk) 13:53, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support per above. TBH I've always been a bit iffy about the plot summary aspect too, it would be nice to clarify that if plot summaries aren't cited then they must only stick to unambiguous WP:SKYISBLUE type assertions that are directly stated in the work, not interpretations of what people were thinking or motivations that aren't stated. But that's not really a matter for this RFC. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 13:53, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  GA nominations are already required to comply with WP:OR and WP:WAF, which hopefully cover any potential issues here. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:27, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

• Support long overdue. For the vast majority of articles, the most practical and likely only way for the content to be realistically verifiable is to be cited inline. (t · c) buidhe 14:01, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support as one of the editors that pushed for this RfC. The GA criteria have fallen behind current standards of what's considered high quality. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:21, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support I think it's expected of any article that is to be deemed of quality on Wikipedia.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:12, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support as I assumed this bare minimum adherence to core policies was already required. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 17:46, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support - and while we're at it, I think we should do away with the "is the pope Catholic/is the sky blue" exceptions entirely. FunkMonk (talk) 18:42, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Although unlike FunkMonk I think that keeping out the [citation needed] trolls for the night sky being black on Olbers' paradox is a good thing. Really obvious statements can be difficult to source because high-quality sources don't generally waste space on them. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:47, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support. No paragraph in a GA should be without at least one citation Billsmith60 (talk) 19:58, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support, with reservations about removing the link to Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines (SCG). Inline citations are expected for verifiability of an article broad enough to meet criterion #3. This has no global consequences as the GA system is run by a dedicated WikiProject that can set its own criteria, so long as they do not violate core content policies. Hopefully it should be implicit that this does not override SCG. I am slightly uneasy about this being enforced retroactively just because of the amount of work this could create—look at WP:URFA/2020 and note that there are 6 GAs for every FA. But, yes, old GAs that do not have inline citations likely fail verifiability in practice and should not be listed as GAs. — Bilorv (talk) 20:05, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support. A sensible codification of near universal current practice which should make expectations clearer while having minimal effect on how things work going forward. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:10, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support I had initial concerns, specifically surrounding how this would apply to tables, but Kusma's point in response to Thryduulf's oppose is a good one, and one that I was coming around to myself. With the modern practice of table captions, where a single citation is used to support a whole table, that can be placed on the table citation, therefore appearing before the information it is citing, and so meeting the proposed criteria. With that covered off, I think this makes it very clear what the expectation is, and should be. Rule creep maybe, but a good one. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 20:17, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support for all the good reasons already mentioned. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:34, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support - per Gog and Buidhe. -Ljleppan (talk) 20:52, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support should be a fairly uncontroversial change, this. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:24, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support, and recommend that we tend to rethink what we consider to be trivial. I recently rewrote John Bullock Clark. Take a look at this pre-rewrite version. I imagine we'd just waive off all that stuff in the infobox as noncontroversial and "trivial" in a review, yet there's multiple errors there. The February 18, 1864, date is a blatant date error, and the mention of Lindley is misleading, as he actually filled the vacancy left by James S. Green as noted by sources on Clark (although technically I don't think Green ever really took his seat, but Lindley was long gone by then and the sources mention Green, not Lindley). What we think is trivial and obvious is often not so; we should be checking these things against sources. Hog Farm _Talk 23:48, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Long overdue. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 01:45, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support, this is already the case in practice, as it should be. The nominators/reviewers of Good Articles ought to be evaluating the source support for statements in an article anyway, so it's not like this would introduce more burden, right? JoelleJay (talk) 01:49, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support, to be honest, I thought this was the case, the articles I've submitted for GA all met it, and when I've reviewed articles for GA status I've insisted on it. Will more stringent sourcing requirements mean that some (not all) GAs take longer to meet that status? Probably, and I don't see that as a problem. Mackensen (talk) 02:22, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support, because this (a) matches the rule to the existing review practice, (b) makes the criteria more clear to new editors, and (c) matches the GA rule to the DYK rule for consistency.Rjjiii (talk) 08:58, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support An article without proper in-line citations cannot be considered a "good" article. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:08, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support, but only on the condition that we make an exception for statements that fall under WP:BLUE; even though WP:BLUE is an essay, there's a good point to be made that we don't need to cite statements that virtually everyone will agree on. For example, in an article about a building in New York City, we should not also need an additional citation if we wanted to say that the building is in the United States. Getting rid of the WP:BLUE exception may invite POV warriors and other users to challenge things that are generally widely known facts, like the fact that NYC is in the US. Otherwise, this is merely formalizing what has been unwritten practice for years, and it would harmonize the rules with that of DYK. Epicgenius (talk) 14:00, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support, should have been like this for years now, and most of us have treated it as if it was; it was an embarrassment that DYK had a stricter rule than GAN. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:00, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  I would change to Oppose if GAN had to be of the same exacting standard as DYK Billsmith60 (talk) 10:59, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support to reflect current practice. I'm not strictly attached to the particular wording, but it does seems good, and as far as I could tell, the DYKSG wording was more popular than other suggestions made in the last 3 discussions. DFlhb (talk) 18:04, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support. GA standards shouldn't be below that of DYK. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 20:26, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  I don't agree with your comparator. DYK is a pain in the neck and more like FA standard Billsmith60 (talk) 10:57, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support, as it seems to me that this has long been a standard practice. My one caveat, as others have said I see no reason for plot summaries to be excluded either, but so be it. To my mind, if we don't allow OR, citations are required. SusunW (talk) 21:12, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support - unverified facts should be nowhere near a GA. We can make exceptions for WP:SKYBLUE when necessary. Anything "good" on an encyclopaedia should be verifiable, above all else. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:02, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support - Honestly, after being around WP:GAR for a while. It's just kind of made sense that GAs should use inline citations and not just general citations. Onegreatjoke (talk) 22:51, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support The person who loves reading (talk) 23:01, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support as long as the amendment also takes WP:SKYBLUE into consideration where necessary (per O'Doherty et al.). Wonder if the FA team has been catching up to this development? --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 11:17, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Duh. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 12:31, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support even at GA-level, this should be the norm rather than aberrative. SN54129 15:24, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support - Would have thought this would have been the policy already. Seems obvious.--NØ 15:36, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support: Tamzin's suggested amendment to account for WP:BLUE is a good catch, and I'd support seeing it updated, but the difference doesn't matter so much in practice. That's because this guideline, at both GA and DYK, doesn't actually require reviewers to investigate the sources to confirm that the cited content is verified. DYK practice doesn't require that reviewers do spot-checks on anything but the bits of the article that contain the facts used in the hook. Tamzin's example about a BLUE bit of the article not being verified in the source, then, doesn't actually play out in this guideline, because it doesn't care about verification. GA hasn't actually nailed down what source reviews should look like in practice, and this guideline doesn't do that either: it just says what needs to be cited. That leaves plenty of room for BLUE considerations ("the provided source backs up the substantive content, BLUESKY background is verifiable elsewhere"). theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 01:13, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support Long overdue, and is already de facto policy among GA reviewers. Surprised that this isn't in the criteria already. JML1148 (talk | contribs) 04:37, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support Since DYK requires this, and GA are supposed to be DYK-ready, this is already a requirement. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:56, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support as the de-facto standard, as the standard the community has already drifted toward for verifiability reasons, as the standard we ought to be enforcing for verifiability reasons in any case, and the standard I have enforced as a reviewer. Contra my colleague above, though, GAs are not subject to DYK criteria, and therefore this is not already the letter of the law. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:29, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

  Addendum; I would argue that common sense still applies, and content we would never cite is still exempt per WP:BLUE; but I would also support modifying the proposal to make this clear. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:33, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support this is a BLUESKY kind of vote. GA can and should be higher standard. I am not so worried about abuse of BLUESKY as it is similar situation in DYK which arguably is even more nitpicky crowd. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:57, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support reflects existing practice and helps ensure high quality. Phlsph7 (talk) 21:46, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose This is not a Wikipedia criteria or even an FA criteria. It's not even reasonable....it would require citing all "sky is blue" material. North8000 (talk) 12:30, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph. Isn't one citation per paragraph the de facto citation requirement nowadays anyway? New articles not following this for example are likely to get a maintenance tag. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:56, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  @Novem Linguae: The proposal doesn't say 1 cite per paragraph. It says that everything must be cited, e.g. sky is blue items. North8000 (talk) 21:13, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  This is not a Wikipedia criteria or even an FA criteria Is WP:5P2 good enough for you? All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy, citing reliable, authoritative sources, especially when the topic is controversial or is about a living person. Editors' personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong on Wikipedia. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:15, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  That sounds a lot more like the existing language than the proposed change. Expecting verifiability "especially when the topic is controversial" is different from expecting citations for every statement. -- Visviva (talk) 17:21, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, per Visviva you are describing existing policy, not the proposed change which goes far beyond existing policy including requiring cites for all sky is blue items. North8000 (talk) 21:17, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  What do you mean by "This is not a Wikipedia criterion"? When taken literally, it's bizarre – of course it's not currently a criterion, it's being proposed! jlwoodwa (talk) 06:59, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is good practice in most cases, but that is very different to requiring it in all cases. Visviva gives a good example, others are lists or tables cited to the same source, e.g. filmographies, sports and election results, several tens of identical footnotes do not make the article more verified than a sentence stating that all entries are sourced to X. Quotes of lists or bullets, etc. would also be required to have an inline citation at the end of every line, even when that would not make sense - see Universal Declaration of Human Rights for several examples. This change would also require inline citations in addition to prose citations, including midway through multi-paragraph quotes. Thryduulf (talk) 18:40, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  I see no language in the proposal that forbids putting the citation before the content as in your example. —Kusma (talk) 19:52, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  I read the proposed text as requiring citations after the cited material. Given that we are both reasonable people this different understanding is another reason to object to the change. It also unquestionably declares that a citation that comes at the end of a (quoted) list that covers more that the last entry in that list as insufficient. Thryduulf (talk) 21:17, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  I think this raises an interesting point. For instance, in an FA I worked heavily on, there's a plain text listing of all the rail lines the company operates. Each section of the list begins with citations which support the bulleted text immediately following. I do agree it would be dumb to add the same citations again and again for each list item. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:41, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  I think it self-evident that placing a citation ahead of the list it verifies (example from a recent article of mine) is both appropriate and not something that would be prohibited by the "no later than" phrasing. TompaDompa (talk) 23:46, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. This seems to be just a rule creep to me. Ruslik_Zero 19:37, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  In addition, omission of scientific citations guidelines is concerning. Ruslik_Zero 19:41, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  The scientific citation guidelines are weaker than the proposed change. Keeping them would essentially carve out an exception where science articles don't have to be as well cited. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:26, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  Indeed: Wikipedia_talk:Scientific_citation_guidelines#Update_needed? Rjjiii (talk) 09:01, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. I would support if "content" were changed to "content that could reasonably be challenged". Consider a sentence like "The plaintiff claimed that the city's actions had violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which protects freedom of speech". Suppose the citation, a high-quality law review article, does not explicitly say that the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, because that's so basic a claim that it often goes without saying. The proposed wording would say that this citation is insufficient, even though the claim is trivially verifiable. To me, that defies common sense. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 20:45, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  In my experience, the "trivial" things are either also trivial to source, or alternatively the process of finding a source reveals they are not quite so trivial after all. Ljleppan (talk) 20:55, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  The point is that this change would institute a requirement that truly trivial and basic matters would need a citation where they do not now, and indeed where doing so would be unnatural - e.g. if an article says that something was criticised by "Multiple United States government departments." with one source that states that thing was criticised by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and another that says the National Institute of Corrections were unhappy with it. Neither source explicitly says that these are US Government departments, because the target audience of those sources would clearly know that. Thryduulf (talk) 21:32, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  Why would trivial matters be in the article in the first place? Billsmith60 (talk) 13:19, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  There is a massive difference between "trivial matters" and "trivially verifiable matters", but some things that are trivial in isolation are important in context (often to provide context). Additionally, some things are too trivial to explicitly state for a source but not for us, because of the different contexts of a general purpose global encyclopaedia and a specialist source. This proposal would require an inline citation for all of this, regardless of context or other ways to verify information (e.g. links to other articles, citations elsewhere in the article, etc.) It's far, far too blunt an instrument. Thryduulf (talk) 12:21, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• Weak oppose per Tamzin. I particularly take issue with the bolded content in this sentence All content, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose). If the content can reasonably be challenged, then sure, we should add a citation. But take an example like railway stations - are we supposed to require citations for simple info such as the next stations on the line? The proposed wording would require that we add an explicit citation for the next stations on the line, which are not in prose, even though this is such a trivial matter that it should not need a citation.
  I do agree, on the whole, that almost everything should be cited inline, but this really should not apply to something that should be, nominally, very easy to verify. My problem with this specific wording is that, in order to meet these new requirements, people may be encouraged to add citations that are not directly related to the topic itself. Take, for example, Palace Theatre (New York City). If I were to write that the Palace Theatre is located in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States, would I have to find a citation saying that NYC is in the United States, even though there is a citation for the Palace Theatre being in Manhattan, NYC? The addition of a citation for the Palace Theatre being in the US would be unnecessary at best and harmful at worst, since not many citations will explicitly mention such a trivial detail as "The Palace Theatre is in the United States", even though this can be very easily verified. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:15, 29 May 2023 (UTC) Moved to Support. Epicgenius (talk) 14:00, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  I would cite the rail stations but I wouldn't require a citation for Manhattan being in the US, to me that's WP:SKYBLUE if included in another sentence with information cited to a specific source. (t · c) buidhe 01:14, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Fair enough. I suppose that citing the next railway stations would be trivially easy, anyway; it just requires an additional sentence in the prose and perhaps a map or timetable. My concern was more with situations like the latter - people would be motivated to find citations for every little detail, even if the addition of such a citation is not important to readers' understanding of the subject, and that is why I slightly opposed the wording of this proposal. – Epicgenius (talk) 01:38, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  The proposed wording is taken verbatim from WP:DYK (specifically from WP:DYKSG#D2). I don't participate at DYK often, but how frequently is this a problem there? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:18, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  I can't recall it coming up there. WP:BLUE situations are generally easy to solve. If they're not stupendously BLUE (ie. Manhattan being in the United States, which is almost a matter of disambiguation), they're usually in an existing citation. If they're not, they probably aren't BLUE. CMD (talk) 03:18, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose seems like a contradiction to WP:BLUE. This specifically says that all content should be cited online, which would include things that we would not typically cite. I'm all for stating where your information comes from and citing to specific sentences, but this is far too damaging. Also, specifically stating about plot sections isn't specific enough. There are other instances where text is not generally cited (image captions, navigational/keys, glossary meanings etc). We only don't cite plot summaries because the source of the information is the subject itself which is a bit of a redundant ref. There are bound to be other uses where the sources are just taken from the subject that aren't limited to plot summaries.

I'm also not the biggest fan of having additional requirements that are higher than that of Wikipedia as a whole. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:38, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

This discussion pertains to nominations for "good article" status. It goes without saying that such articles are of a higher standard than "Wikipedia as a whole". I wouldn't object to examples like the First Amendment one above, where a subclause contains an "sky is blue" type assertion, but there shouldn't be standalone claims that are uncited in a GA, however "obvious" you may think them.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:49, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

So why does recently promoted GA Songbird Sings Legrand contain an uncited assertion in the first sentence? None of the citations in the article verify that Regine Velasquez is Filipino - source 2, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, states that she is "local" but (a) that is the sort of "obvious" you are arguing against, and (b) this citation comes two paragraphs after the claim. It has been explained elsewhere that you cannot rely on claims in other articles, so whether it is verified there or not is irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 14:13, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose for many of the same reasons discussed above. An example of an issue that could emerge based on GAs I've written: Would TV episodes have to cite credits? That's not in line with current practice. It's reasonable to require inline citations for the types of statements outlined at WP:BURDEN, but this is already implicitly covered by criteria #2: "Verifiable with no original research", with a link to WP:V (which WP:BURDEN falls under). I would consider supporting new language more in line with those policies. RunningTiger123 (talk) 16:40, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  If this does pass, I think "plot summaries" should be changed to "statements drawn from a work being discussed". That would cover cast lists, and also brief mentions of a work's contents, e.g. "In Genesis, God creates Adam and Eve", while also clarifying that a plot summary is not a get-out-of-jail-free card to write statements unsupported by the work's plain meaning. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 19:53, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  I support this, and I'll go a step farther to say that this should be updated in other project space pages as well. The proposed text was originally taken from WP:DYKSG#D2, where it says plot summaries, and WP:When to cite similarly mentions plot summaries to the exclusion of other types. Then there's also the fact that we have MOS:PLOTCITE and MOS:PLOTSOURCE, which go into more depth about this, but I don't know of any equivalent for things other than works of fiction. I've run into this issue when writing articles about nonfiction works, where I basically had to assume that I could use it as a primary source for itself in the same way. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:38, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose usual practice is that some information does not need a citation, such as statements which every reader will recognise as true. This is the case for GAs as well. Hut 8.5 17:49, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as contradicting WP:BLUE and going past FA criteria. I hope whoever closes this discounts arguments that Every paragraph must have a citation as the proposal is about every fact/statement and not every paragraph. I'd appreciate someone explaining to my why this proposal is necessary although I appreciate the work put into proposing this. I also fail to see how this "matches DYK criteria" as the DYK criteria (to my knowledge) is only about the hook and not the whole article, Chipmunkdavis. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Non nobis solum. 13:45, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  Ixtal, see WP:DYKSG#D2. It's verbatim. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 13:54, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  Thebiguglyalien, thanks. I remain unconvinced GAN rules should be made to match DYK supplementary rules, but appreciate the clarification. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Non nobis solum. 14:10, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  I'm also unconvinced. Why should I have to follow the DYK rules if I write a GA but don't want to bother with DYK? XOR'easter (talk) 14:57, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose As a rule of thumb, I think this is a good one, but this would elevate that to a status it does not deserve. XOR'easter (talk) 14:52, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, seems too strict to me. Plot summaries are an odd exclusion. As the original author of WP:BLUE I'm heartened to see it's stuck around. Stifle (talk) 15:13, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per Tamzin, Lee, and XOR'easter. The current wording reflects two existing major guidelines with broad community consensus; the proposed change would institute an arbitrary standard for no obvious benefit. Additionally, I think the new wording is less helpful. Giving specific advice on citing contentious material about BLP subjects, citations for direct quotes, and reference to the scientific citation guidelines is helpful for reviewers and editors. The proposed change would remove that generally applicable advice in favor of noting a special exception for plot summaries and "summariz[ations of] content cited elsewhere in the article". Leaving aside the issue of what the standard should be, the proposed change seems to make the criteria less helpful in orienting editors and reviewers to our actual policies. If all that's desired is to add a requirement that inline citations be used to cite information within the paragraph it appears, I'd rather that simply be tacked on to the existing, helpful text, instead of overwriting it with a less helpful criterion. — Wug·a·po·des 23:16, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, per WP:BLUE, the fact Wikipedia:Verifiability is a core content policy and Wikipedia:CITE EVERYTHING is not, et cetera. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 16:41, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per Tamzin. I think that there are some trivially verifiable statements that we don't need explicit cited sources on, and we need not impose anything further than WP:NOR and WP:MINREF for GAs. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 02:12, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per Tamzin. Volunteer Marek 05:55, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Solution in search of a problem. I agree with the arguments in opposition given above by Tamzin and Lee Vilenski. —Ganesha811 (talk) 20:28, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, however I would support something like all citations are inline and are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counterintuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines. --Rschen7754 20:34, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as seemingly stricter than the featured-article criteria (Wikipedia:When to cite). DMacks (talk) 02:48, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose while it's a FA candidate not GA Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication/archive1 is an example of an article which doesn't use inlines everywhere for a reason. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 05:12, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

  Would you support then the alternative wording provided by tamzin above? (If this does pass, I think "plot summaries" should be changed to "statements drawn from a work being discussed". Rjjiii (talk) 08:21, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per many others. To be honest, I'd drop criteria 2 and 4 entirely and replace that with something general about meeting all content policy and relevant guidelines. Leave it to the whole community to determine the V and RS guidelines, not some quality club pet rules. -- Colin°^Talk 07:51, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

  If that were the policy, how would you explain the review process to a new reviewer. What actions would you tell them to take in order to review a nomination? Rjjiii (talk) 08:19, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

  You'd just tell them to ensure that the article met the relevant policies and guidelines, perhaps with examples of which ones are relevant and what meeting them looks like in various common situations. Thryduulf (talk) 10:25, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

  Based on a conversation elsewhere, I've realised I didn't spot the "and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article" tucked in after the "plot summaries". Perhaps if the proposal succeeds, then those two exceptions might be reversed since the first affects a minority of articles and the latter is relevant to all. I thought this proposal was another attempt to demand our leads be overcited. Regardless, I still oppose. I think the job of quality standard projects should be to enforce community guidelines, not create new ones and new exceptions of their own. And others have noted that the problem may include images and also other information readily drawn from the subject (e.g. song) itself, not just "plot summaries". The existing practice of not needing a citation if the fact is already cited elsewhere does not insist (as this proposal does) that one location of this fact "summarises" the other location. Merely that they cover the same fact. Is "Genre R&B" (in the infobox) a summary of "Musically, "It's a Wrap" is an R&B song". Nope. Just another way of saying the same fact. Remember too that categories are also "content" that may need to repeat a fact cited in the body. This is why we get into a mess when we try to restate P&G and it isn't this project's job. -- Colin°^Talk 13:01, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

  Why should the "quality club" not be allowed to dictate the "quality club pet rules" when they don't affect any other P&Gs or projects? JoelleJay (talk) 19:45, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose current proposed wording (although I agree many things like this need to be fixed at GAN). This proposed wording takes the GA criteria well beyond even the FA criteria, which state:

  1c – ... supported by inline citations where appropriate

  Problems in citations and much more in the GA process need to be fixed, but this proposal is overreach, and won't solve the core problems, which are about how reviews are conducted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:36, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

  Sandy, I agree that the proposed wording is stronger than what you quote from the FAC criteria. In practice, though, FA reviewers operate on the same basis that this wording proposes -- it's been years, perhaps as much as a decade, since I recall seeing a nominator quoting WP:When to cite in refusing to add a citation request from a reviewer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:45, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

  I don't disagree, but the way this RFC has been approached is backwards. I can't even tell what the proposal intends (probably partly related to I have never understood what a GA is ... in my way of editing, if you're writing a decent article, you cite it. Period.) Is the intent to make the GA standards the same as the FA standards? Then, what is a GA? If the intent is to clarify what the FA standards are, or to change them, then this is the wrong page for doing that. You seem to be saying the intent of the proposal is to make the GA standards the same as what you believe the FA standards to be, and if your interpretation of the FA standards is what you are stating here, then the place to change WP:WIAFA is not WT:GAN. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:54, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

  The proposal doesn't change GA standards to FA standards, it fixes one tiny aspect of GA to reflect the current practice. Plenty of differences still exist between FA and GA articles. JoelleJay (talk) 19:40, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

  Then it's hard to tell what it does. WRT citations, I have never understood the point of an allegedly "good" article (decent enough) not being fully supported by inline citations. I agree that should happen (although the whole point is moot as long as most reviewers aren't even checking those citations). I don't think the way this proposal is worded does the job appropriately. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:35, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

  Sandy, per your reference to DCGAR, the instructions have since been changed to specify that spot-checks must be performed. There's also now a page which logs recent activity at GANs, and some GA regulars look at this periodically to try to spot weak reviews. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:12, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose—the propose is well intentioned but fatally flawed. We'd end up with the oddity of stricter requirements for a GA than an FA. We'd also end up with issues related to requiring sourcing for content that site wide policies and guidelines do not require to be sourced. Imzadi 1979 → 23:30, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose echoing others. GAC should not be stricter than FAC. –Fredddie™ 01:02, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose - I see no constructive purpose or reasoning to make GA content a higher standard than A-Class or Featured, both tiers above GA. Having it stricter than either would defeat the purpose of having A-Class and Featured. The second reason is that there aren't always inline citations available. Using highway articles as an example, the respective highway authorities sometimes place the data into route logs, straight-line charts, etc. Many of these lack details for proper inline citations, which does not make them less credible. If these cannot be used, it would be impossible for highway articles to reach GAN status. I can understand the need for better sourcing, though the push by editors on sourcing, material, article content, etc., on Wikipedia has gone too far, is unrealistic, draconic, and threatens to purge information about major topics off the website altogether. This isn't Encyclopǣdia Britannica. This is supposed to be a repository of common knowledge anyone can contribute to or edit, and the ever-increasing standards make Wikipedia lose sight of its original and intended goal every time the standards are raised too high. I will not support this proposal and strongly advise anyone who reads this to do the same. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 05:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. I get what the idea was, but this would impose stricter rules for GA than FA. And it also loses too much in translation. The original is correct that for a big class of things we want to see an inline citation per statement. It is not okay to bury a quotation or a controversial claim in the middle of a large paragraph and then just dump some citations at the end of the paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SMcCandlish (talk • contribs) 06:25, June 7, 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:BLUE. Editors should be encouraged to use common sense about where a citation is appropriate in a GA. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 19:44, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. I really wanted to support this, because I certainly agree with the general principle that content should be well-supported by cited sources. But I don't think that the proposed change works. If we were to implement the change, there would still be a need for commonsense editorial judgment to deal with BLUE situations. And the status quo language also requires common sense to decide that a cite is needed. Per Tamzin and others, I tried to think of amendments that would achieve the nuances that I would want, and I end up with more complicated ways of saying what the status quo language already says. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

See the discussion of this change here. The proposed wording reflects current practice in good article reviews -- experienced reviewers have required everything to be cited, with the exceptions noted above, for a long time. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:48, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I've posted a note at the village pump, and added it to the centralized discussion template. Any other notifications needed? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:13, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

What does (or line if the content is not in prose) mean? Might need clarification. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:56, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: I take this to refer to lists, tables, image captions, infoboxes, etc., where there is content that may need a citation, but which is not organized in paragraphs. --RL0919 (talk) 16:20, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

• I'd support if there was a "grandfathering" exception for current GAs. Johnbod (talk) 14:05, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  I wouldn't mind giving current GAs a grace period, but grandfathering is bad: people should be able to look at existing GAs as model for new GAs, and different rules are bad for that kind of things. —Kusma (talk) 14:17, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  This is my position as well. I suggested in the WP:RFCBEFORE discussion that we don't immediately delist any article that fails this updated criterion, but that we use the standard reassessment process as we find issues just like all of the other GA articles that have fallen below the minimum requirements. I'll note that, whether it's procedurally valid or not, WP:GAR has already been delisting articles failing this citation standard for a long time, even though it's not part of the criteria.Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:31, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  I've been de facto applying this standard to GAs when I check for needed GARs and I'd imagine I'm not the only one doing so. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:16, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

• I can't quite find my way to opposing the proposal, but I share North8000's concerns. On the one hand, there is a problem to be solved here: it's not good for the project to have an opaque GA process in which candidates are judged on criteria that authors don't have fair notice of. That weakens Wikipedia by making it less welcoming to the newbies and lower-engagement editors on whom so much of the project's content depends. On the other, this change doesn't really feel like a step in the right direction, and has a distinctly rules-creepy vibe. The GAC are aspirational, but the same could be said for a lot of our policies and guidelines in practice. So this isn't really just a GA process issue: quality-conscious editors are going to look to GAC as a lodestar even if they aren't planning on getting a particular article to GA. And anything that moves the culture of Wikipedia further toward "get everything right first" and away from "give it your best shot and then sort it out collaboratively" is going to tend to further weaken and slow the project. This is a small change, but every little change like this shifts Wikipedia further away from the kind of editing culture that makes wikis an effective collaboration tool. At the same time that isn't really a problem for the GA process to solve. So I guess it's reasonable to focus on just getting the GAC to reflect actual reviewer practice. -- Visviva (talk) 17:21, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

That's an insightful overview. I was on the fence, but "So this isn't really just a GA process issue: quality-conscious editors are going to look to GAC as a lodestar even if they aren't planning on getting a particular article to GA. And anything that moves the culture of Wikipedia further toward "get everything right first" and away from "give it your best shot and then sort it out collaboratively" is going to tend to further weaken and slow the project." has tipped me to "Support". If editors are looking at GAs as good practice, then let us try to make them so; and GAN should be post "sort it out collaboratively" (IMO). Thanks for helping me to form a view. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:03, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

If people look to the GA criteria as an example to follow, and this leads them to relying upon a formula when thinking is required, then that's a bad outcome. XOR'easter (talk) 15:10, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

That's a bad outcome whatever our criteria are, though. To the extent that editors are mindlessly applying rules without doing any thinking of their own, I would rather them mindlessly apply rules that make it more likely that they are producing good content, and easier for other people to find and fix problems. I suspect on balance GAN applying an incentive for editors to be over- rather than underenthusiastic in their citation practices would be a positive change. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:14, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I want to invite those opposing this to provide an alternative update. Perhaps using some of the language in Tamzin's post? The current rule does not reflect the current practice. To keep the language of the criteria the same, would not actually keep the existing rule, but would instead keep the rule a secret from new nominators. Rjjiii (talk) 04:45, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

In which case the current practice is what needs to change - GA should not be requiring references for BLUESKY things, should not be requiring citations in the middle of quotes, inline citations for things referenced in prose, etc. The rule as currently written matches WP:V and I see no benefit to making anything more stringent than that. Thryduulf (talk) 12:31, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

GA does not require those in practice, nor would the rule change require them. CMD (talk) 12:36, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

The rule change absolutely would require them - it says All content, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose). (emphasis mine) there is no exception for anything to is not a plot summary or summary of other parts of the article. Unless you are arguing that the things Tamzin, me and others have pointed out are somehow not "content" then they absolutely would require inline citations no later than the end of the paragraph/line in all cases. If this is not what GA requires at the moment, then the proposed text does not represent current practice as claimed. Thryduulf (talk) 13:15, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Every case brought up would be or is part of a portion of cited information. Ideas such as "Manhattan is in the United States" and "the First Amendment protects freedom of speech" are going to be part of larger prose that has citations. The new guideline does not mean that citations need to define every word used in the prose, or similar. We rely on editors to understand their sources enough to copyedit and explain them, and that remains true even in the new rules. As for the finding of edge cases regarding particular formatting for listes, quotes, tables, or other forms of presentation, no wording would meet all edge cases.

The GACR do not exist in isolation as a piece of legal text. Much as with all our policies and guidelines, they are read and understood within the framework of how en.wiki works as a whole, including other policies, guidelines, and practice. Every single policy and guideline on en.wiki explicitly has exceptions, and the GACR are no different. Anyone trying to wikilawyer a fail through some sort of edge case or another would be rebuked, and those raising them as general questions would create discussion that helped clarify community consensus. As Rjjiii notes, the current wording gives a misleading impression as to what is expected from the community throughout all our various content evaluation processes, including GA/GAR, particularly for those not deeply versed in wiki-understanding (which anyone who accurately references and understands WP:BLUE is). There is not going to be a perfect formulation, but the new text goes a long way towards giving a more accurate impression of what is done. CMD (talk) 14:56, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

The current wording (and WP:V) encapsulates that these are guidelines with general exceptions, the proposed wording does not. The proposed wording literally and explicitly says that "all content" must have inline citations. Lists, multi-paragraph quotes, etc. are not edge cases they are core parts of hundreds of thousands (at least) of encyclopaedia articles. You and others have made it clear that there is no exception for SKYISBLUE, etc. Except now it seems like you are saying that there can be exceptions when its convenient but not at other times - that is much less friendly to those not versed in "wiki-understanding" than what we have at present.

The current wording gives a misleading impression as to what is expected from the community throughout all our various content evaluation processes. Looking through recently-promoted GAs, as someone who is not intimately familiar with the GA process, the current wording appears to be a much better reflection of the expected standards than the new wording is. Thryduulf (talk) 19:01, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't see where I or anyone else has ever said there is no exception for SKYISBLUE or etc., let alone "made it clear". I will however state that lists and quotes are generally not SKYISBLUE, and should be cited. As someone who is familiar with the GA process, the existing wording suggests a much lower standard that is actually expected. If you have seen GAs which do not cite things properly, please bring them up in a new section here or take them to GAR. CMD (talk) 02:12, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

CMD, I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I have never seen a single reviewer suggest that WP:BLUE be ignored at GA or at DYK, nor has anyone come up with such an interpretation until this RfC after several discussions about this. While I'm sure the oppose !votes all have legitimate concerns, some of these look so similar to wikilawyering that there's really no practical difference. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:09, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, perhaps we took the wrong thing from DYK, and have overlooked the DYK solution of having 60+ supplementary rules explaining the 18 criteria explaining the 5 core requirements. We only have 10 criteria to explain 6 core requirements, bunch of slackers really. CMD (talk) 02:12, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I have never seen a single reviewer suggest that WP:BLUE be ignored at GA or at DYK – that is literally what this RfC would do, though. "All content must be cited". -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 05:09, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

@Maddy from Celeste: I can't speak for everyone, but I think virtually all of the supporters (including myself) are of the view that true SKYBLUE supersedes the need for citations for that particular area, but not the rest of the content of the paragraph. I just struggle to imagine a time when there would be an entire SKYBLUE paragraph, such that no citation would be necessary for the entire paragraph. Perhaps it's just that we've become overly legalistic, on both sides. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 05:28, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

It's a blurry line between clarity and legalisticism. I think we should strive to have guidelines that represent the real expectations, not the expectations minus certain implicit-to-some exceptions.

To address the matter at hand, WP:BLUE is an essay that presents an interpretation of WP:V and WP:MINREF. But this is a proposal to explicitly set higher standards for GA than V and MINREF. As such, you can't rely on BLUE to justify exemptions. In fact, BLUE bases one of its arguments on the current GA criteria. Even beyond BLUE, which as an essay should not be given too much weight here, the very argument that some facts do not need inline citations has its policy basis in V and MINREF. Again, if we set higher standards than MINREF, we cannot implicitly rely on MINREF for certain unwritten exceptions. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 08:34, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

We already have higher standards than MINREF. MINREF itself explicitly states "Substantially exceeding [MINREF] is a necessity for any article to be granted good or featured article (or list) status". It's also, inherently, the minimum, which seems an unusual bar for a process aiming to identify articles which are developed well beyond the minimum. CMD (talk) 10:45, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis, it looks like that sentence was boldly added without discussion in 2020 by an editor who no longer seems to be active. I don't agree that it's true, so I'll remove it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Disagreement could change it I suppose, but it is true. It's not even GA and FA, there is furor when even a DYK goes up with poor referencing, ITNs are routinely rejected on sourcing, and OTDs are regularly removed. CMD (talk) 01:28, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

"Poor referencing" and "substantially exceeding MINREF" are not, necessarily, the same thing. It is entirely possible for an article to both substantially exceed MINREF and have poor referencing - for example every sentence having citations to half a dozen sources of varying quality. An article about a contentious BLP could easily be GA quality without exceeding MINREF by virtue of there being almost nothing that hasn't been or is not likely to be challenged. Thryduulf (talk) 08:10, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

You're quite right, I conflated two things. What I meant: The current GA criteria, just like MINREF, do not require everything to have an inline citation. Therefore, some things do not need inline citations – WP:BLUE. If we establish as a criterion that everything must have an inline citation, it is no longer true that not everything is required to have an inline citation. Hence, WP:BLUE would not be applicable anymore. It is important that WP:BLUE is an essay that explains why some things do not require inline citations; it is not a policy or guideline that could grant an exception if GA criteria specifically contradict it. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 13:58, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Even if it were a policy, GA could still require it. GA is a purely voluntary thing. We could make a GA criteria that says the letter E must never appear at the start of a sentence if we wanted to, or that there must always be an odd number of images. So long as it doesn't contradict a policy, it's free to have higher (or weirder) requirements. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

One of these days, the community is going to have to reconcile the fact that the absolute bare minimum of what has to be cited under policy (WP:MINREF) is nowhere near the level of citation that's expected of a half way decent article (everything except common knowledge, plot summaries, and summaries of content elsewhere in the article). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 13:29, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Editors who believe that nearly everything is Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged, and that therefore nearly everything already requires an inline citation, would not agree with you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:01, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

That is where we are in practice, and what the proposal is trying to address. This RfC is a case study in the difficulty of making Wikipedia processes more accessible. CMD (talk) 01:32, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Examples from recent GAs

Here are some recent examples from reviews I've done in which the proposed wording reflects my current reviewing practice better than the current wording. These are not BLUE cases; they are cases where the uncited content doesn't fit into the categories required by the current wording.

• Talk:Carbon accounting/GA1 -- search the review for "There are uncited sentences...". The nominator initially argued that citations weren't needed, but I pushed on despite not having GACR supporting me.
• Talk:Marisa Anderson/GA1 -- the discography was uncited.
• Talk:Les Avariés/GA1 -- interesting because the nominator pushed back on the need for citations, citing WP:WHEN, and I had to make an argument that they should be cited anyway despite the GA criteria. When the nominator complied they responded "I have to admit, this actually did end up being a productive exercise, as I ended up finding some new details along the way, and identified and removed a claim that was not supported by sources and possibly incorrect."

This is three examples from the last twenty or so reviews I've done. I felt that none of my requests were supported by the current criteria, but I asked anyway, and I think the criteria should be changed to support these requests. As for BLUE issues, I agree with others above that true SKYBLUE issues are extremely rare. I don't think I've ever had a debate with a nominator over whether something was BLUE and needed to be cited, and I don't expect it to ever come up. I probably wouldn't object if, after this RfC, another was started to add some kind of wording about BLUE, but I don't think it would make any difference at all to reviewing practice. I would oppose adding such wording to this RfC, for fear of derailing a needed change. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:01, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Looking at your three examples:

• At Carbon accounting#Other applications the very first sentence fails the proposed criteria because it has no inline citation. It's not a SKYISBLUE by the arguments in this discussion so even if that unwritten exemption does exist (and there are different interpretations about whether it does or should) it wouldn't apply here.
• Marisa Anderson#Discography is currently only partially cited (I've not looked to see if this has changed since the GA review), but even if it were fully citied it would fail under the new wording if one citation was used to cover more than one line rather than having one per line.
• Les Avariés#Synopsis passes because of the plot summary exception.

So two of your three examples do not demonstrate that the new wording matches the current requirements. Thryduulf (talk) 14:30, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

We don't need an unwritten exemption for "GHG accounting is used in other settings, both regulatory and voluntary", as we have the written one about summarizing text. I've fixed the discography, good catch. CMD (talk) 14:52, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Thryduulf, can you clarify? For Les Avariés, this is the version I was reviewing. I feel the current wording doesn't strictly allow me to ask for sources for the last three sentences in the "Film adaptations" section, because those statements don't fall into any of the categories listed in 2(b) of GACR. Are you saying that the current wording does allow me to ask for sources, or that asking for sources for these three should not be required for GA? I think you're saying the former, but I don't see how you're basing this on the current wording. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:06, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I want to know more about the expectations for citing a discography. Currently, under normal WP:V rules, the correct citation for a statement that amounts to "The Beatles recorded an album called The Beatles" is – nothing. That is the form of inline citation described in Wikipedia:Inline citation#In-text attribution, because the authoritative citation for it is the album itself. You could spam in a copy of {{Cite AV media notes}} between a pair of ref tags, but it would be redundant. It seems to me that this proposal would basically end up with reviewers insisting that ref tags be added anyway, so that the material will look like it's been provided with an inline citation. Is that what you expect? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

In practice, the discography will also tell us things like when the album was first published and how long it is, which needs a citation. You should not cite this to just "the album" without further qualifications as there are sometimes different versions and you need to specify them clearly for verifiability. —Kusma (talk) 20:17, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I believe it's typical for albums to have both copyright dates and information about how long it is. In the event that there were different versions with different information, I could see a need to specify, but not a need to use a pair of ref tags to do so. Consider "Album length: 23:45 (US version), 25:01 (UK version)".

With bibliographies, which are also part of "all content", different book editions are very likely to have different information, but we have never used ref tags in lists of works to specify that this item is the 2003 book with 243 pages published by HarperCollins vs the 2009 re-issue with 312 pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

@Mike Christie re Les Avariés#Film adaptations, I hadn't considered that section. The proposed rules would require citations for those statements because release dates and national origin of production are not summaries of the plot. Whether the film genre and a film being a modernisation are summaries of the plot could be argued either way. The current rules do not require there to be citations, but WP:V does require them for material that has been challenged and the GA criteria do not prohibit you from challenging unsourced statements. Thryduulf (talk) 11:46, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

So do you feel that with the current wording of the GA criteria, all unsourced statements can be challenged by the reviewer and hence a source can be required for everything? With the usual BLUE etc. exceptions? That's (more or less) the outcome I would want, since that's current practice. If there's a consensus that that's the case, some wording change to clarify that that's how the review should be conducted would satisfy me. I don't know if other supporters of this RfC would agree with that, though. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:52, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Any unsourced statement can be challenged by anyone at any time for any (good faith) reason, and WP:V requires challenged statements to be sourced. I don't think GA rules could override that if even if that was desirable. Thryduulf (talk) 12:41, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

I think that answers half the issue the RfC is trying to address, but only half. The current wording means that if I had passed Les Avariés without challenging those statements, nobody could complain, because the GA criteria don't require me to do that. You're saying that a GA reviewer can challenge those statements, per V, and of course you're right. The RfC is trying to change the criteria so that it's clear the reviewer should challenge those statements. Do you see a better wording that would convey that? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:37, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Off the top of my head I can't think of a wording that encourages reviewers to challenge statements where relevant but doesn't require them to do so (or punish them for not doing so) where they aren't relevant (concise, clear wording is not my forte!). Any wording should also not be overly prescriptive about how and where a citation is provided, e.g. if there was a single source about adaptations of the work it should be permissible to cite that after every entry in the list or once at the start or end of the list (which is best will depend on context). Thryduulf (talk) 14:21, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Then I think we've put our finger on something that is behind the disagreements above. Most experienced GA reviewers now do challenge all unsourced statements (barring BLUE etc.). You say any wording "[shouldn't] require them to do so", but the impetus for this RfC is that the supporters believe the GA criteria should be made more stringent -- that a reviewer should do so. That was the intent of the wording change. I think it's possible to oppose this RfC because one agrees with this approach but feels the wording is flawed, or because one feels the criteria should not be made more stringent in this way. (It sounds like you might oppose on both grounds.) I might be sympathetic to other wordings, but I think the change is needed. Perhaps supporters above are not changing their !votes based on the oppose arguments because the opposes are engaging with the wording rather than the fundamental question of whether the change is needed in the first place. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:34, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think GA reviewers should challenge everything that could theoretically be challenged, rather they should apply same standard employed by the featured article criteria quoted by Sandy Georgia which strike the right balance and allow for the application of common sense and context while still requiring high standards of sourcing. The intent of the proposal is imo too strict, but wording is much stricter than even that intent (or at least the intent according to the majority of those commenting, others think the strictest possible wording is the stated intent).

For a real-world example, SECR N class is a featured article but would fail GA if the proposal passes because the N class construction history and Withdrawal sections have tables that are referenced with a single citation in the table header rather than one at the end of every line. Thryduulf (talk) 23:26, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

"High standards of sourcing" is incompatible with leaving challenge-able claims unsourced. Also, why wouldn't citations in the table header be valid under this new criteria? It doesn't say at the end of the line. It says no later, meaning you can't use WP:GENREF or anything like that. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:22, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

The "standard employed by the featured article criteria" is effectively that everything is sourced, which is exactly what is being proposed here. It also remains a higher standard than the proposed wording, because it requires that sources be of high quality while GA still requires sources only be reliable. CMD (talk) 01:22, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

That's perhaps not a great example as it has a number of unsourced claims in the body which should be addressed to bring it back in line with FA expectations. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:04, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

You could argue that it still meets the FA criteria even with a bunch of unsourced claims. And that's the problem here. On a sidenote, I'm loving the votes that essentially oppose because the FA criteria are weak and out of line with expectations, so the GA criteria should be even more so for consistency. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:12, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Well... those votes are consistent with the reason GA was created. Editors wanted a lightweight way to identify decent articles – the ones that were "only" good, not the best ones. The kind of thing that most decent editors could realistically aspire to, without having to go through a nitpicky review process, or argue with a bunch of people, or know exactly how to format the citations, or anything like that.

Scope creep has been something we've had to push back on for as long as I can remember. There's always someone who wants to add just one more little thing. Back when we added most of the footnotes at Wikipedia:Good article criteria#cite note-1, we had a tool that flagged dead URLs, and multiple reviewers falsely claiming that dead URLs were banned in GAs. Then it was extra MOS pages. Then it was citation formatting. We didn't write Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles#Imposing your personal criteria and Wikipedia:What the Good article criteria are not just for the fun of it; we were addressing the problems that we were seeing with multiple reviewers trying to push GACR towards a personal FAC process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I also really don't like when reviews involve personalized criteria (nitpicks about reference formatting are especially a pet peeve of mine). But meeting WP:V is just the bare minimum to not have content removed. I'd think that to say an article is "good" would require a bit more than that. Maybe it's because I wasn't around in the early days before this became the norm, but I do think that a citation for each unique claim is what's necessary before an article should have any little icon indicating quality, whether GA or FA. Not only is it impossible to check for OR without them, but it raises the question of how an editor summarized reliable sources without any reliable sources. An article with a bunch of uncited statements is not "good" or even decent. I'm not even convinced an article like that would make it through AfC, let alone GA.

But on the note of scope creep and simplifying the process, I think there's general agreement that GA needs some sort of reform to make it easier to nominate and review, especially for newer editors, and I'd love to see ideas to make that happen as well. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:17, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

The current proposal is one that works towards this goal. It replaces a vague and individually interpretable criteria with something consistent that would reduce nitpicks and arguments. CMD (talk) 02:44, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Images

In terms of what counts as "all content": Should there be an exception for images?

User:Mike Christie, I see that you recently passed several GAs that do not have citations for the images: Frederica Planta, Andrew Planta, Abishabis. The Wikipedia:Image use policy is listed in Wikipedia:List of policies#Content, so I think it's safe to say that images are content, and the proposal says it applies to "all content". How do you expect editors to cite the images in those three articles? What function are the citations supposed to serve? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Depends on the image, but if what it depicts is at all controversial it's a reliable source should be provided, either in the article or image description, for what it depicts. I believe that the proposal is only for text content however. If rewording the proposal to "prose content" would ameliorate your objections to it, perhaps we should consider that. (t · c) buidhe 22:01, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

"Prose content" means "not content contained in lists, tables, infoboxes, images, graphs, captions, lyrics, or poems". That's probably a bigger exemption than you intended. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:05, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Agreed - we don't normally expect citations for images, which I suppose amounts to believing what the Commons file says, and cites, in most cases (though of course these are sometimes wrong, just as "reliable sources" are). Sometimes they are desirable though, often mainly for the caption rather than the image itself. Since images get used all over the place, it is better to add a reference to the Commons file than to a single use of the image. Johnbod (talk) 22:06, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

My usual standard is that an image that merely illustrates something in the article text, with a caption that merely summarizes something in the article text, does not need a citation as being "that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article". If there is actual new information or claims in an image or its caption, they need citation. And in some cases the source of an image may need a citation for credit instead of for verification. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:36, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

A technical drawing might "summarize cited content elsewhere in the article", but a photo of a person does not, and a source that directly says "This is a true and accurate representation of what this person looked like" is generally hard to come by. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:07, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Notice: Women in Green editathon

Women in Green is currently hosting an editathon for the month of June. Editors are encouraged to join the event to nominate and review articles about women and women's works. There's a barnstar in it for participants. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:51, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Julius Schaub: Reassessment Request

I've added a note at this article's Talk page that it should/might be delisted, if others would kindly have a look: Julius_Schaub, Billsmith60 (talk) 18:00, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

GA review exceptions report May 28 – June 3

Hopefully we can come up with some sort of flagging system so this doesn't become a regular thing:

• I've already removed one drive by nomination (Im Yunjidang) from the last week. Battle of Longewala is a borderline case. Philippines at the 2020 Summer Olympics also appears to be a drive by, but I failed a review from this nominator just now and it doesn't feel right to have the same person remove another one of theirs as well.
• No checklist reviews!
• Possible failure to closely review the article or to spotcheck sources:
  • Talk:1980 San Diego Chargers season/GA1
  • Talk:Battle of Snyder's Bluff/GA1
  • Talk:Dreams and Nightmares/GA1
  • Talk:Talking to Yourself/GA1
  • Talk:Combat (video game)/GA1
  • Talk:Howard Florey/GA1

Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:49, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Talk:Howard Florey/GA1 has been deleted by Yamla per WP:G5. TompaDompa (talk) 17:08, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I have undone the promotion, restored the nomination, and notified the DYK nominator. TompaDompa (talk) 17:17, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I've removed Battle of Longewala, no point running something borderline through given it is but a quick fail anyway due to substantial unsourced text. CMD (talk) 01:55, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm the nominator for Snyder's Bluff, and would be perfectly willing to provide quotes for a spot-check if desired. I'm fairly busy IRL right now, so there might be a couple days' delay though depending on when requested. Hog Farm _Talk 02:35, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

@Hog Farm: I spotchecked the two online sources, [1] and [2], and they both support the text and raise no obvious copyvio issues (to the point where it took me awhile to match the first one to your text!). I don't think the article provides any context as to what the "the two halves of the Confederacy" are, but that's just a since-we're-here comment and it is (similarly unexplained) in the source. CMD (talk) 03:02, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Need reviewer to close review

Hi, editor (Shibbolethink) has been reviewing Talk:COVID-19 pandemic/GA4 , I've answered about 224 comments, however Shibbolethink stopped editing here [3] (actually he doesn't seem to have edited anywhere). I left him a message [4] and sent an email, however I haven't gotten a response to either. It seems he may have finished the review or be very close to it, I'd appreciate anyones help, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:29, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

It's only been two days. There are all sorts of reasons he might not have time to work on Wikipedia stuff right now. Personally, I usually give it a week of no activity before I check in. It looks like you've both done good work on it though, and if the review is left open for a while longer, then a new reviewer can give it a look. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:41, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I would simply wait, for now. Just over 48 hours have passed since their last edit, which isn't that long. This could very well be due to a computer breakdown, for instance. TompaDompa (talk) 23:45, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

ok, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:49, 4 June 2023 (UTC) (BTW now its 3 days [5])--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:27, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Seems to have returned sorry for post, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:45, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Possible abandoned GA review

They've done it again. User 420Traveler looks to be abandoning another one of my GA reviews, although they did manage to post comments this time. It's been six days since they last edited, and although I'd give them at least a few days, I'd like to get a second opinion on whether this is too long before someone else takes over. Bneu2013 (talk) 16:46, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd say, if it were my nomination, I would ping the reviewer after a week of no action and if it's two weeks since a response from them I would consider asking for someone else to step in. (t · c) buidhe 20:13, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Looking at their contrib history, it seems they frequently have breaks in editing for periods of a few weeks, so given this hasn't even quite been a week yet, and they at least posted meaningful review feedback, I wouldn't be getting impatient just yet. I think there would need to be several weeks (perhaps 3+, or even a month) before someone would consider stepping in to do another review. Hopefully it won't get to that though. Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:36, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

For the last one they did, which was picked up a little over a week ago, they disappeared for over a month before they made another edit. That being said, while I appreciate their willingness to review nominations, if you are unable to complete a review in a timely manner, then you shouldn't be reviewing GA nominations. Bneu2013 (talk) 21:22, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I know it can be frustrating when the reviewer doesn't respond promptly but personally I prefer it when someone reviews my nom and takes a few months to do it than when it sits waiting for review for 6+ months (which is also a common occurrence). My own GAN Sorley Maclean—GAN 18 August 2018, passed 23 September 2019. Anything that is discouraging competent reviewers including arbitrary time limits should be avoided. (t · c) buidhe 21:27, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

We say 7 days in the GA documentation. I really can't agree that it's fine to wait months for a reviewer after they've started a review. That's time someone else could have come in and actually done the review in a timely manner. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:25, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, and I left them a message about this recently. Continuing this behavior would bring me towards supporting some sort of sanction - this really is antithetical to a collaborative process to start a review and then just disappear for a month plus. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:23, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

In the case of that review, it didn't seem like it was even meaningfully started and so a 4-week period with no feedback is fair enough to hand to someone else, in that instance. The review in question was at least started and, while it has been only a week thus far, I do think it seems reasonable to suggest that this editor is mindful about taking extended periods of leave if making a review committent. There are no explicit instructions for review time-frames, only an encouragement of responsiveness. The reviewer may well question which element of the reviewing policy or guideline they're falling foul of if this isn't stated explicitly. Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:01, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Exactly. Further, if a nominator waits several months and then happens to be away for a while when their GAN is finally addressed, that can readily be understood; but if a reviewer voluntarily takes on a commitment to a GAN and then promptly disappears, one may reasonably ask whether they are behaving at all appropriately for the process. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:27, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

If you start a review, it's pretty reasonable to expect that you will finish it, yes? Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:13, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Just for the sake of full disclosure, I want to make it clear that I do not believe that all GAs should be reviewed in seven days (or a month or two months). It is indeed a process that should not be rushed. I won't deny that I am guilty of being slow to finish a few reviews myself. The only reason I raised a concern was based on past behaviors of this reviewer. Bneu2013 (talk) 15:39, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Adding the Notability Criteria for GAs

TL;DR - Should notability be added as a criteria for Good Articles? As in, the topic of an article must unambiguously meet any of the notability criteria, whether WP:GNG or WP:SNG in order to be evaluated and pass a Good Article review?

I've wanted to ask this question for a while on why the GA (and FA) criteria doesn't include any mention that an article must meet the notability guidelines. I assumed it wasn't necessary because it was implied that an article should obviously be notable in order to meet GA status. However, I saw an AfD of a FA where participants concluded the article somehow doesn't meet GNG in spite of the FA review. Considering that a FA review is nothing to take lightly, the notability of the topic should've been addressed much earlier than this. And right now, there's even a back-and-forth debate over a topic's notability despite the article meeting GA status already.

I think this issue is definitely something of concern for two reasons: one, it implies that an article of a dubiously notable topic can technically reach GA status. And two, it also implies that any GA can still potentially be deleted in an AfD. I don't believe both of these implications benefit Wikipedia editors nor readers in the slightest, because if GAs/FAs are meant to represent the best work Wikipedia has to offer, then having such articles still be fallible to deletion only indicates that this site itself isn't secure enough about its own encyclopedic content. As an inclusionist I admittedly have more "tolerant," for lack of a better word, standards for notability. And I don't think that a topic must meet GA status in order to be notable. But isn't it reasonable to state that a topic must be notable in order to meet GA status?

Finally, if I had a specific solution, I'd imagine that an implementation of notability in the criteria would go something like this:

• Criteria #2 (and perhaps #3): at least multiple sources must be present in the article that significantly cover the article's topic. Of course, this goes without saying that these multiple sources must be reliable, independent and secondary.
• Quick fail policy #6: an article may immediately fail GA if the article's topic is of questionable notability
• Reassessment: A GA should not be sent to AfD or merged/redirected unless a reassessment is made first that shows that the article not only fails the GA criteria, but the article's topic may potentially be non-notable.

PantheonRadiance (talk) 08:05, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I think the current policy, is that if you are going to review an article and find that you believe it does not meet notability, put it up for AfD instead of doing the Good Article Review. I don't think I see the issue with the current plan.Rjjiii (talk) 08:09, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

As Rjjiii says, if a reviewer (or potential reviewer) has a notability concern, then they should start an AfD, as that is the most suitable place to discuss notability. It would be inappropriate for either of these processes to weaken AfD (by suggesting that GAs and FAs can't be directly subject to the AfD process). I would oppose any effort to add notability as a criterion for GA or FA. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 08:19, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

But if a reviewer has such a notability concern, wouldn't it be appropriate to Quick Fail the article so that the nominator may know in advance that the article's topic may not meet the guidelines? It would give the nominator a chance to at least address the notability issue first before using an AfD to do so. And what about when an article does pass the criteria but as the notability policies change, it may not meet the guidelines anymore? Why wouldn't a GAR suffice before an AfD? PantheonRadiance (talk) 08:35, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Contrary to how GAN often acts in practice, there is no requirement that every article be either quickfailed or painfully dragged past the finish line. A subject where the article is not in a quickfail-eligible state, but the reviewer has concerns about its appropriateness for an independent article, can be hashed out perfectly well in the review, and the review can be closed non-quickly if there are irreconcilable differences on the subject. It is not universally agreed that articles close enough to GA they can't be quickfailed are likely to be non-notable outside unusual circumstances, and such unusual circumstances are generally too complex and subjective to codify at this level of resolution. 'Notability policies [sic] changing' is also a fairly complex situation that isn't universally agreed to imply either of 1. notability guidelines necessarily tightening, rather than having complex up-and-down courses on many subject matters or 2. something generally applicable to articles capable of passing quality-assessment processes, rather than e.g. stubs. Vaticidalprophet 08:45, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

@PantheonRadiance: No. AfD is the only suitable venue to discuss notability. Doing so at GA or FA is superfluous. What would you propose happen if at GAN or GAR an article is failed or delisted because of notability concerns, but then it survives an AfD? Would the decision at GAN/GAR be reversed, or would it stand? It would be too messy. Let AfD deal with notability, and GA/FA deal with quality. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 09:10, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

If, as a potential reviewer of an article you come across something at GAN you have notability concerns about, then I would say the best action is to list it at AfD (after carrying out BEFORE checks, obviously) and then add a |note= to the {{GA nominee}} template on the article talk page, saying something like "Article currently undergoing an AfD due to notability concerns." Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 09:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Harrias My idea was meant for the case where a topic's notability is dubious insofar it would not survive an AfD in the first place - as in, it decidedly doesn't meet a single notability guideline. In that edge case however, I don't see what the issue is with a future renomination after all the issues are properly addressed including notability itself. Perhaps between the fail/demotion and the AfD's close, clear evidence was found which proves the topic's notability, such as previously existing sources not found during the GA review but found in the debate. In that scenario I would d find it fair to renominate after rewriting the article with such sources that slipped past editors.

Vaticidalprophet I think that a non-QF GA review that involves concerns about a topic's worthiness for an independent article is somewhat along the lines of what I meant, in that if a reviewer's concerned about its notability, it should be addressed in the review just like the rest of the criteria. My quick-fail idea was meant to be along the lines of "it wouldn't come close to surviving an AfD because it obviously doesn't meet the guidelines."

I will concur however that it this is a fairly complex situation because of how notability in and of itself varies in interpretation, and how consensus changes. But in a more general sense, if a topic doesn't seem to meet any notability guideline, it should be addressed in the review itself to avoid instances of nominating current GAs for deletion. PantheonRadiance (talk) 10:00, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I struggle to imagine an article that hits "blatantly obvious AfD fail" and doesn't hit any existing QF criterion. Keep in mind what the GNG is and what its implications are; "significant coverage in independent reliable sources" is the de facto minimum to write a decent article on a subject, such that 'uncontroversial GNG failure' and 'GAN that obviously can't be quickfailed' are an unlikely combination. This is not to say that no GA or FA has ever had a non-keep AfD outcome, but the specific circumstance being posited is something I haven't ever really seen. Vaticidalprophet 10:04, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

A significant issue for handling notability in GAN in particular is that notability discussions involve a range of perspectives balancing different aspects of en.wiki's notability-related policies and guidelines. A process involving only two editors (a reviewer and a nominator) can not be expected to emulate that. CMD (talk) 09:33, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree that editors have varying perspectives that make this issue complex. Admittedly, the only ideas I had to rectify it were to either have more editors chime in during a GA review (per step 4: "other editors are also welcome to comment and work on the article"), and/or have the reviewer also be from the WikiProject the topic originates from (ex. Book GAN -> WikiProject Books). PantheonRadiance (talk) 10:20, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't disagree that non-notable articles shouldn't be promoted to GA or FA, but I don't know that formalising "must be notable" as a GA criterion is a workable solution. How many articles are sufficiently clearly non-notable that a reviewer would fail a nomination on that basis, and yet meet the existing criteria 2 and 3 of WP:GACR? My suspicion is as close to zero as makes no difference. Most GA/FAs deleted or merged at AfD, IME, are either (a) promoted a long time ago, when the community was more willing to accept articles which would not be created today, (b) promoted based on inadequate reviews or (c) of borderline/questionable notability.

Changing the rules to explicitly allow failing articles for non-notability wouldn't affect classes (a) or (b), but I can think of at least two detrimental effects on class (c), which I suspect may outweigh the benefits. Firstly, it would lead to a potentially messy situation where a reviewer fails an article in good faith for lack of notability, but either the article is never actually AfDed, or is AfDed and kept (or worse, there is no consensus). What happens then? If an article has previously survived an AfD (even through a no-consensus close) does that mean that it automatically meets the notability criterion? Secondly, we already see "keep: it is a GA" votes being made at AfD, and any encoding of notability in the criteria would I suspect only encourage them; I do not want GA and FA to be seen as some special extra layer of protection against deletion whereby you have to convince reviewers to delist an article as non-notable before it can be deleted. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:18, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I would say the AfD keep votes are in fact a reason to add the criteria explicitly, since it's currently (erroneously) being used as a shield anyhow to keep articles that aren't notable. We might as well require a basic sanity check at the GAN level. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:12, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

This has been raised in the past, such as in this proposal last December. Article quality or status is an invalid deletion rationale, and a half decent closer at AfD would throw out that !vote without further consideration. This is an issue that needs to be solved at AfD: there's a major problem with editors giving deletion rationales that don't cite notability guidelines. Such editors need to be reminded that they are participating disruptively, and if they ignore the warning, they need to be topic banned from AfD until they demonstrate an understanding of WP:N. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:47, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Article quality or status is an invalid deletion rationale, and a half decent closer at AfD would throw out that !vote without further consideration is a rather blasé description of genuinely differing positions on "is it possible to write an article that does not pass GNG, but is in compliance with what a 'good Wikipedia article' is". (Lower-case and added word intentional to avoid confusion between 'good articles' and 'Good Articles'; I have seen GAs I think are Start-class, and many high-quality articles outside assessment processes, but so it goes.) My question for this issue is what articles you've seen that are both "something that couldn't possibly be quickfailed at GAN" and "something that obviously couldn't have a chance in hell of surviving a deletion discussion". The biggest situation that regularly comes up regarding objectively-quality-assessed or subjectively-high-quality articles going to AfD is about a specific SNG that prescribes a stricter standard than GNG, and none of the (several) situations I've seen this happen have been anything like the easy cases people imply exist when these discussions happen. Vaticidalprophet 18:12, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that a lack of notability is not the only valid reason for deletion, contrary to the implicit suggestion in there's a major problem with editors giving deletion rationales that don't cite notability guidelines. It is one of a canonical list of 14 reasons that is explicitly non-exhaustive. TompaDompa (talk) 21:33, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Never seen one deleted for lack of notability, but GAs have been deleted as the creation of a sock (criterion #1), due to there being a copyvio (criterion #2) and under WP:IDONTLIKEIT (criterion #14) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:19, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I think notability problems more commonly end up with the article getting merged/redirected than with straight up deletion (the question is "should we have a standalone article about this Pokemon/episode/book", not "should this topic not be mentioned anywhere in the encyclopaedia"). The only straight deletion of a (former) FA that I am aware of is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ANAK Society. —Kusma (talk) 09:34, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

And as a hoax (criterion #6): Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bicholim conflict. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:12, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

This proposal is not needed, as the current rules already accommodate for this scenario. We have rule 3: "It has, or needs, cleanup banners that are unquestionably still valid". An article of questionable notability should be tagged with {{Notability}}, and that article has to be either fixed or deleted before even starting GA nomination discussions. Cambalachero (talk) 18:42, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

That tag should not be used. There is no such thing as "fixing" notability; either a subject is notable or it is not. The proper place for discussing notability is WP:AfD. If the result at AfD is "kept", then tagging the article for notability is vexatious editing and grounds for a block. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:19, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

The tag is for articles where it is unclear whether the subject is notable or not. Poorly sourced articles that do not clearly demonstrate that the subject passes WP:GNG often attract it. At AFD, WP:HEY is a nice outcome if the subject is notable but the article did not show it. —Kusma (talk) 09:29, 9 June 2023 (UTC)