Wikipedia talk:Proposed very good articles/Archive 1

Proposition vs. proposal

This is a very minor point, but after check a few dictionaries, I'm pretty sure that this should be proposals for very good articles rather than propositions.--Brett 22:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I was coming here to say basically what Brett just said. This page (and its subpages) should be called either "Wikipedia:Proposals for very good articles" or simply "Wikipedia:Proposed very good articles" like the category. What do you know, we're both SE Wiktionarians, too. Probably coincidence. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 02:28, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I wholly agree. I have made the move. · Tygartl1^·talk· 02:37, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Voting

Currenly, it is unclear when an article is moved from proposal stage to voting stage. I think we should clarify this. - Huji ^reply 14:59, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I guess I figure that if someone wants to vote on it, they can move it to the voting section. Anyone can make the move. If someone votes in the discussion section, it can be moved down to the voting section. · Tygartl1^·talk· 15:02, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm confused. When we comment on an article when in the top section, is this a type of voting? If no, then what is the exact border between voting and commenting? If yes, then why do we need a different section for voting, as it can be done in the top section. - Huji ^reply 17:19, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Any idea? - Huji ^reply 21:56, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not totally clear on it. Personally I see the top section more as a look I found another candidate section. What the specific article still needs to be moved to the voting stage should be on the article's talk page. If we want to formalise it more, I see different possibilities

• Only the original poster can start the voting process; articles that stay in the top section for too long (what is too long), can be de-listed again.
• Any named editor can initiate the voting; once he or she thinks the article is ready; again, there should be some time frame.

This is supposed to be a working tool, articles that stay in the pvgood stage for too long are likely not going to make it. I think Huji, you raised a valid point. These issues need to be addressed. --Eptalon 22:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Too many VG articles

I've been editing here for a long time under a username which will remain anonymous (for fear of reprisal). There are FAR too many VG articles on simple wiki!

Every single proposed article has passed except for maybe 2 or 3. Look at Kamikaze or Jimi Hendrix! Those articles go into far greater depth than almost all other VG articles. These ones on various storms are pathetic, almost! They are barely a page long, have less than 10 references for each one, huge pictures taking up space and hardly any other websites linked. I think that you guys have to be MUCH less leniant on the quality of VG articles here. Make a cetain word limit, the Hendrix article and the Kamikaze article are both over 1000 words, I think even over 2000, currently, these propesed VG articles are less than 500 words. I wouldn't normally say this, but that's pathetic. There are stubs on en wiki that are longer than this.

BE TOUGHER, it isn't a bad thing to have high standards on a wikipedia! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.169.129.36 (talk • contribs) 11 December 2007 16:33 (UTC)

Interesting opinion. I agree with your basic point: I think we need to have higher standards and not be quite so eager to promote so many articles to VG status. I think we are being quite lenient and I feel that there are people who are voting without reading the articles closely, thoroughly, or all the way first. I would also like to repeat what I said when voting oppose to Muhammad: "I'm alarmed when I'm far from the first person to vote and I find a number of basic mistakes when I read over an article that is under discussion here. I'm afraid people aren't reading thoroughly before they vote." I think it's shameful to have an article on display as "our very best" that has basic typos, grammar mistakes, no references, or vital information missing. I wouldn't go so far as to say that any of the promoted articles are pathetic, however.

This is good timing with the discussion on simple talk about "good" articles vs. "very good" articles. Perhaps we might want to think about changing the current VG articles to Good status and creating stricter criteria for promotion to VG articles. Perhaps something along the lines of having an article spend a certain amount of time at Good status before being promoted, and a higher percentage of support (like 75 or 80%). · Tygrrr... 16:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think there should be more users as quorum for a decision and I agree very much with the suggestion to change all VGAs to Good status. Then there can be a focus on them for a longer time before a decision for VGA. --Cethegus 17:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with statements given by other users. I would agree to increase the number of votes needed and making all the VGAs into GAs until such a time as they can be reexamined and revoted with stricter guidelines. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  22:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

It is indeed very interesting this has come up. I also think the basic criteria we have for the very good articles are fine. What alarms me more is that there have been some promotions of articles to VGA status that did not meet the requirements. The vote on the respective pages is not Do you think this article should be promoted to VGA status, but rather After reading the article carefully, do you still think it fulfills the criteria as listed. I am also not alarmed at the fact that we have many articles on tropical cyclones; there are only very few (perhaps 5) people regularly contributing articles. Often the articles are moved from the proposed page to the voting stage too soon. I therefore think the following should be done:

1. We agree on a set (minimal) of criteria a good article (not a VGA) should have. This should be a subset of the VGA criteria. All VGAs are good articles too. (There is a proposition for that here
2. We stop the current VGA process.
3. All current VGAs are given good article status; they are then reviewed one-by-one for which fulfills the criteria, and re-promoted.
4. New VGAs can only be picked from the GAs.
5. We start the new process (probably one page for all promotions both for VGAs and GAs alike).

I think the criteria for VGAs are good per se. What can be tweaked, in my opinion:

• Increase the number of minimal votes needed (like 10 instead of 3, with 7 supporting). There problem there is that we are an active community of between 30 and 40, so 10 votes is an awful lot.
• Increase the percentage needed (for example 75% instead of 66%).

Looking at this, the next steps would be:

• (Re-)agree on the VGA criteria. Some points may need to be clarified.
• Define a subset of the VGA criteria to use as good article criteria. This should also become a guideline.

These are of course just my thoughts, any comments are welcome.

As to the numbers: there are currently 21.800 articles. If we say that 1% of the articles are posssibly very good, this makes 218 articles. Currently there are 32 articles in the VGA category. --Eptalon 18:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I also agree with the idea of changing all VGAs to GAs for now, and chaning the wording of VGA criteria in a way to show an article must meet "all" criteria to be given VGA status. I think we should increase the number of proportion of support votes required too, and suggest some 6 votes with at least 5 in support. - Huji ^reply 21:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the concept of Eptalon and suggest to choose Hujis numbers: 6 votes and at least 5 in support, but I would accept any other numbers as long there are at least 70% of all votes in support and at least 5 votes in support.

I think we do need not great numbers of VGAs, but some VGAs and some GAs that can convince the community and that can set a standard for new decisions. --Cethegus 23:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I strongly oppose as of what is going on here right now. First of all, I don't agree with the idea to immediately demote all of the VGAs to GAs and freeze the VGA procedure. Because, the articles here have been already been approved by the community themselves and would be idiotic to simply remove them all because a few people think otherwise. Secondly, making stricter rules for the VGA process would also be a bad choice since we are not yet a big wiki such as en wiki or the german wiki. We only have 21k articles compared to more than 2 million at en, and 500k at de wiki. Third, if you wanted to start a GA process, you need an assessment scale unless you later want to risk the articles be unorganized or how good they are. Fourth, increasing the # of supporting votes is too early because only like less than 5 or 6 people care about the current VGA process. Just because we have like 20 admins dosen't mean any difference since only a fraction of the sysops regularly check out WP:VGA. So to simply put it in just one sentence, I simply must oppose on everything on what's going on here. Whatever the heck it might be, I don't find the plan to be appealing. And also, just how in the world are you going to promote VGAs and GAs in one page?!? God if this world is just as retarded as school I'm no longer give a damn and leave. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 00:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that it is safe to say that I was that IP address, I was nervous that some people would strongly oppose my ideas for tougher VG article status but I see now that I have many "allies" on this subject.

Firstly, I want to apologise for stopping to edit altogether for about 2 months now, but I need to give school my full attention. But moving on, I think simply that many of our VG articles are NOT VG. Some have less than 500 words!

I think I know what I'm talking about, maybe not as good as some, but with 3 VG articles, all over 800 words, think that we can set the standards a little higher here at Simple. Since I've got about 3 weeks holiday now with nothing to do, I'll be glad to work hard on demoting all VG articles to GOOD status and then re-promoting them with the exeption of mine, which would have to be gone over by someone else for fear of being biased.

I may well be alone in my thoughts here, but I want each VG article to be MINIMUM 700 words with at least 10 references, 10 other websites and one picture.

Tell me what you think?

Gwib^-(talk)- 19:01, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

ps. strong opposition to the sentence "as retarded as school" by Snake311

Whatever, i hate my school. Anyhow I don't understand why everybody wants to demote all VGAs to GAs when this wiki itself promoted them. I also don't think it is necessary for every VGA article to have 10 refs, 10 external links, and one picture. First of all, there are FA articles in en wiki that have no images on it. Take Homer Simpson for example, I would like to add in a picture on to it, but it is a copyrighted and non-free image. Also, I don't find it necessary for all articles to have 10 refs and 10 external links, about 5 or 6 are enough unless you want to find them for us. Also just because you want a VGA to have something something something, you can't just demand the community to agree with you. And just why do you have opposition to "as retarded as school", you have a girlfirend or what? --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 01:46, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Most of the VG articles here passed the VG article process with only about 3 votes, including that of the person who moved it from the proposed to the voting section. And I'm not demanding the community to agree with me, I'm simply voicing my opinion, tying in with the "TALK" of "TALK PAGES". It's what they're for: to voice your opinion. But honestly, I know you've done a lot of work on some of the VG articles here but look at them, they're simply too short!

I will do the work if necessary, but I don't want to see 500 word long VG articles here. Once again, stricter guidelines are not a bad thing!

Gwib^-(talk)- 06:30, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

@Snake311:"I don't understand why everybody wants to demote all VGAs to GAs when this wiki itself promoted them" It is not necessary to understand this, because it is not true. There were only a few who were in favour of VGAs with low standards, and here are a few in favour of VGAs with higher standards. A decision should be taken by more than 4 persons. That's from my point of view what the dicussion is about. If the community agrees to halt the VGA-promoting process there is a chance to discuss it and to get more people to look at these pages. And - as I understand - this is your aim as well. --Cethegus 08:56, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I also think that the VGA process is slighty flawed. It could raise the standard bar a little, because I think there are some articles that are short. We should think about raising the standards of VGA to be inline with other wiki FAs. RaNdOm26 11:36, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I again insist that in my view, with the amount of disagreement we can see about the future of VGAs, it is better to freeze VGA process for a while. I'm not in totaly agreement with changing all current VGAs to GAs; this should be done after the definition (read it criteria) for GAs are well defined and agreed upon, and should only happen to those VGAs which don't fit with VGA but fit with GA criteria at that time. - Huji ^reply 14:34, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Demotion?

What I had in mind when bringing up changing VGAs to GAs was making our VGA guidelines the new GA guidelines, and then creating new, stricter guidelines for the VGAs, which will hold them to higher standards. From what I'm understanding from reading the comments above, it sounds like this would be a start to the solution of our problems. Let's try to keep in mind that we all have that same goal: to have articles on display that we can be proud of. I think we can create higher standards for the VGAs and perhaps some of the current VGAs will still meet these high standards. Those that fall short will have clear steps for improvement and VGA status should be reachable with some work. Try to think of it less as a "demotion of the current VGAs" and more as a "creation of new VGA standards". · Tygrrr... 15:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

A reasonable and mature approch, thanks Tygrr. But we all have to agree to do this, even Snake. Anything but a unanimous decision would mean that we're all ganging up on a single particular editor. I can understand why Snake is against my ideas though, he has done a lot of work on the current VG articles. But honestly, when this can become a VG article, a list of hurricanes, we know that standards have fallen too low.

Gwib^-(talk)- 15:41, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I currently support this idea completely. The guildelines for a VGA is simply too simple. It needs to be tougher. -Razorflame (contributions) Talk 15:44, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I think there is another possible approach to this. Currently there are 32 VGAs. Of those 16 are supposed to be "average"; 8 are "above average", and 8 are "below average". If we now agreed on which 8 are "above average", we could compare them to the average group, to see what is different. The VGA guideline could then be tweaked in such a way that (only) those 8 above averages pass; Then there are 24 articles, that are no longer VGA's. The better half of them (12) could be our "Good Articles", and the Good-Article guideline could be made to fit them. This would mean that at the end we have 8 VGA's, 12 GA's (that can probably be improved to VGAs with little work), and 12 articles, that will probably need quite an effort to first be made into GA's and then VGAs. We should indeed keep in mind that the 20 articles "selected" in this manner should be the very best, and quite well-written articles. Our work should therefore focus on the following:

• Identifying the articles to base our guidelines on.
• Proposals how the VGA and GA guidelines should look.
• Improving current VGAs to meet the current guidelines.This supposes that the new guidelines will be similar to the existing ones.

And of course, before we start anything major, we the (regular, high-volume) contributors should agree on how to proceed. --Eptalon 20:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I think Buddhism is definitely one of those above-average ones. -Razorflame (contributions) Talk 20:09, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I do not agree with trying to arrange the guidelines so that 8 will be VGAs, 12 will be GAs, and 12 will be demoted altogether. This seems to be an entirely backward way of approaching this situation. We need to first decide what an article needs to have in order to be a VGA or a GA and then secondly determine which of the articles now are VGAs and which are GAs. If none or only a few are VGAs by the standards that we would like to have, that's unfortunate, but it just means we have to work a little harder at achieving a quality article. If most of the current VG articles qualify to our new, higher standards--fantastic! But let's not try to limit ourselves. Let's focus on what quality articles need and then work at trying to reach that level of quality.

Other than your point of "Identifying the articles to base our guidelines on", I agree with what you are saying.· Tygrrr... 21:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Although having a look to our best articles can give us ideas about how to set the new VGA criteria (so we don't set them too harsh), I agree with Tygrr here in that we shouldn't do things backward, and set our goals based on the number of VGAs which we want to demote to GA, etc. The rest of what I wanted to say is already told by Tygrrr here. - Huji ^reply 22:05, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The road ahead

Given what is above, I think we can all subscribe to the following:

• We have (very) limited resources; unnecessary work should be avoided at all cost, if possible.
• We should first agree on criteria to base ourselves on. We would be hunting a moving target otherwise.
• We want to preserve as many articles as possible at the highest level possible for them.

Therefore:

• Please say what you concretely want to change at the VGA guideline, and the proposed GA ideas. Ideas floating so far:
  1. Increase the minimal article length for VGAs.
  2. Increase the amount of support needed to 70%, with at least 6 votes
  3. Require a certain number of external links/references/images. This is problematic though. Depending on the subject it might be very hard to find references/links or images. Personally, I'd prefer no image and a better explanation, than a bad image (that is there because it is the only one available).

I know that pressure is bad, but I think by the end of this month, we should have both guidelines in a state to be voted on, or we should be discussing details. --Eptalon 20:22, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the increase in minimum article length, I believe that the minimum article length be pushed up from 2,500 bytes to between 5,000 and 7,500 bytes.

I agree with the increase in minimum number of support votes, only I believe that it should be 80% support, not 70%. There should be at least 6 or 7 votes, at least 2 to 3 of which come from the current sysops.

There should be a new rule that says that only articles from GA's can be put up for proposal to be VGA's.

-Razorflame (contributions) Talk 20:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I strongly agree with all these and I'm so glad that they've happened so quickly! I just hope that I haven't disappointed too many people who's VG articles are being "demoted" (for want of a better word). I definitely agree with ALL of the aforementioned points and hope that they can come into motion before Christmas.

Some leniency can be accorded with the images, but nothing else should be changed except a word limit equivalent to the byte-version, since I have no clue how long a 5,000 byte page is :P

Gwib^-(talk)- 20:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

A 5,000 byte page is a full screen. -Razorflame (contributions) Talk 20:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

25 lines of text, broken at width 80, is 2kb of text. --Eptalon 21:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I think we should increase the required support to anything above 75%. I don't think we should give objective measures for references/links (like a static count, or even a proportion like 1 reference per paragraph); I believe we better keep it subjective, like what it is.

By the way, I noticed Gwib refered to some of the current VGAs as "my" or "their"; articles on the Wikipedia don't belong to anyone in specific, but to all of us. Using the phrase "Huji's VGA" for an article to which I have contributed a lot is not good, and can become sensitive too. I think we should avoid this from now on. - Huji ^reply 22:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I know some of these have been mentioned by others, but here are the main points that I would like to see improved:

• a 5 or 6 person minimum of votes, the higher the better while still being realistic about the number of people that regularly vote (it'd be great to be able to say 8 people minimum)
• 80% support, I'd be willing to go as low as 75% (think about it: 75% and 80% would require all but one person to agree that it is worthy of promotion until we get at least 8 people voting--4/5=80%, 5/6=83%, 6/7=86%, 7/8=88%--if we go with 75%, only 6 of 8 people would need to approve of promotion)
• we should mention that VGAs should be comprehensive, as en:wiki says in their FA criteria "'Comprehensive' means that the article does not neglect major facts and details". To me, length of the article is less important than whether or not everything important is covered

One thing I'm uncertain about is whether or not only GAs can be proposed as VGAs. A positive thing about this is that it would slow down the process and ensure that we're only voting on articles that have already proven themselves to be well-written. A negative thing is that if an article is ready now, it shouldn't have to wait and go through an arbitrary extra step. Maybe we could do some sort of compromise: any article that qualifies for VGA status after we have decided on the new criteria can be automatically promoted. Then, after we unfreeze the process, we could require articles to follow a process of GA first and VGA second, with an (as yet undetermined) waiting period between promotions. As I understand it, articles on en:wiki can go directly to FA status, but since we have had some difficulty in being strict about enforcing the criteria in the past we could try it this way first and consider changing it in the future if it proves to be an unnecessary step. · Tygrrr... 23:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

(unindenting; this is getting long again; we don't want readability to suffer) One option would perhaps be to leave both paths (direct promotion to VGA; promotion of a GA to VGA) open, but to make it considerably easier for GAs to be promoted. If we are changing the criteria, things that I would really like to see in the VGA criteria (some are already there, but perhaps too weak):

• Each VGA must have multiple (named, non-robot) editors, before being submitted to the vote. Each editor must have contributed a decent section (as in: having iws added by someone else does not count). This is also supposed to make the overall quality better.
• Minimal listing time before vote is 1 week. (also for GAs)

And of course: current VGAs get preferential treatment, in that before unfreezing, we should have reclassified all 32 current VGAs appropriately. --Eptalon 23:35, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I have read the past discussion(s) and has seen that the majority of the editors agreed on a stricter criteria on VGAs, introduce the GA procedure, and freeze, review, and demote the current 32 VGA articles. As Gwib mentioned above, it was true that I opposed the proposal since I worked my butt off to create 7 VGAs and nominate several more, I decided to agree with Huji's advice on his talk page and rather not get pissed off about it.

Several of the agreed upon proposals so far was a

• 75 - 80% support for new VGAs with a minimum of 5 or 6 editors supporting,
• Either decide to directly promote VGAs or by step-by-step via Good articles,
• Demote about 12 VGAs (please not mines, PLEASE).

I gave some thought over this and decided to go along with the flow rather than be the lone opposer. My alternative plan which I hinted before was...

• 75% support w/ 5 supporting editors for VGAs,
• 65% support w/ 3 supporting editors for GAs,
• Can directly promote VGAs but still requires a 75% support and at least one peer review prior to the nomination,
• Proposal section can last for 2 weeks and voting phase one week (both VGAs and GAs),
• A minimum of a full screen (or 5k bytes) for VGAs,
• 3k bytes for GAs,
• Have one person (either sysop or an active top editor), monitor the entire VGA process and have another do for the GA process,
• and have all of my suggestions mentioned just above be killed off by other editors and sysops and leaving me for nothing.

I hope that at least someone would take time to see my alternate proposal. But whats the d*mn use. *sigh* --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 00:16, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with most of these suggestions, but have found two flaws in the alternative plan. Some want to make 3kb articles GAs, and 5kb articles VGAs. However, people are complaining about the length of current VGAs. If the 5kb minimum remains, that how will we raise the standards of VGAs? Why not make the GA minimum 5kb, and the VGA minimum 7.5 or 10kb?

Also, I think that all current VGAs should be demoted to GA status, but we should cycle through all of the current VGAs and vote on them to become VGAs based on the new criteria, with five of six votes per week. Clearly, the quality level in some articles is much better than others, such as Jimi Hendrix compared to more recent entries. After about a month, we will have all of the articles fairly sorted out. Thamusemeantfan 02:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Final decision

I think it's safe to say that most of our active editors have seen and read the arguments :f they haven't (I haven't seen Archer7 or Creol give us their two cents) they can always read over them and finally post their own opinion here.
I am in favour of:

• 5 or 6 votes
• 80% support, anything under does not make it
• Temporary removal of ALL VG articles until they can go through the VG article process again
• VG article criteria changing:
  • Long articles (7.5kb text approx.)
  • Comprehensive
  • Fixed number of references/other websites/pictures. Some exceptions can be made here though

Let's see your ideas and whether or not they follow similar paths to mine, when we have enough of a shared idea, we can put it into practice.
Gwib^-(talk)- 06:36, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

My opinion would be to have a minimum of 5 votes in, with minimum of 75% in support. I don't prefer measuring the size of the article in bytes. I would prefer measuring by the number of words/characters used in the article: not including any characters used in templates, images, references, categories and external links. I prefer at least 500 words in a VGA article. I would also prefer that articles should be well sourced and be comprehensive. RaNdOm26 09:24, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

• My several cents (I can rarely stop at 2..)
  • I see no reason to temporarily strip the VGAs, re-vote, and reinstate as needed. After setting a time frame for a vote on which meet the criteria (32 articles, 8 per week in order of initial selection, over in 4 weeks), vote and then remove VGA tags from those that don't pass. Why add the extra step of removing it if it may just go right back on?
  • Article size should be checked only after the article is acceptably comprehensive. Covering larger topics (WW2, history of the British isles, etc) can usually be done easily in 10K and be nowhere near comprehensive. Size should also not include interwiki links and lists as these can greatly increase the size of the article with little added information.
  • Adequate wiki-links should also be requires as some of the current articles have had terms unlinked just to clear a red-link. Simplicity and ease on access to terms used should be pushed heavily. (see Violin and explain why several of the composers and most the "Famous violinist" are not linked. It is one thing not to link a persons non-notable parents, spouse, siblings or children but include names just to be complete, but to list them as famous then ignore them...)
  • I would argue against articles needed significant contributions from multiple editors as an article should not be punished in the case were its creator was spot on in writing it. One of the problems we have is that the people voting do not seem to be reading the article while thinking "What can I do to improve this". If all the editors voting on it can't find anything wrong with the article other than the fact only one person significantly edited it, it is still of the same quality as if 10 people edited it. If they go over it and locate issue and correct them (or at least point out problem areas that others can correct) prior to voting (these issues should be brought up before the vote, just plain sloppy to find 5 typos and a iw link to a deleted article on the German wiki during the vote itself), then we have the extra editors contributing, but this may not actually be mandatory.
  • References as needed, Images as available, and lots of leeway on External links (if the article is comprehensive enough, links to other sites with more information may not be needed)

  Two cents and some extra change. -- Creol(talk) 11:50, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Creol has a point there, and I find myself more than agreeing with it: Lots not demote VGAs to GAs, except if they don't meet the new criteria obviously, or they don't reach the minimum support votes in the future votins we're going to have for them.

Like others, I think we should focus on comprehensiveness of the article, rather than its size. It is the vote of the users which can show which article is thoguth to be comprehensive, and which one is not.

Again, I agree with Creol's comment about "adequate wiki-links". I think we should prepare every article when it is "proposed" but not yet pushed to voting, and one way for such preparation is to make all needed links, and give way to others to try and fix redlinks. The other step of preparation is what Creol said in the above.

Cheers, - Huji ^reply 14:43, 14 December 2007 (UTC) (/me takes Creol's change and returns a bill)

Attention: I have created a page that attempts to summarize the opinions I am hearing from everyone. The page is at Wikipedia:Requirements for very good articles/New. Please come comment on the specific wording of current criteria, as well as criteria that should be added, removed, or changed. · Tygrrr... 16:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with everything on Wikipedia:Requirements for very good articles/New. They seem to be reasonable demands. Trevor "Tinkleheimer" Haworth 03:41, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

My opinion(s) is/are that the new criteria makes it very difficult to write a VGA article under those standards. --§ Snake311 _{(T + C)} 04:34, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I also have something else to add. Currently, the VGA criteria is that it meets at least half of the criteria. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the new criteria, it must meet all of the requirements, right? Thamusemeantfan 07:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

The current criteria are, that the article can be listed (and the pvgood tag added), when at least half of the criteria (i.e 5 of the 10) are met. To be moved to the voting, all criteria (except of course the vote) must be met. --Eptalon 09:41, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with everything in the new VG article criteria. How many people should agree before we can change them to the standard criteria? <be>

Gwib^-(talk)- 11:28, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps as many as we can call it a "consensus". Anyways, I generally agree with them, and am discussing minor changes on its talk page. - Huji ^reply 19:28, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Has consensus been reached?Trevor "Tinkleheimer" Haworth 05:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a comment

I just noticed that most of the articles proposed were made by Snake311....isn't that a little biast? -Razorflame (contributions) Talk 18:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

In order to make sure it doesn't get biased, it is a good idea for all of us to try to write and propose good articles. - Huji ^reply 19:08, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

"To try and write"?? If you could see my face I'd be wearing a very disgruntled expression right now what with 3 VG articles under my belt!

Gwib^-(talk)- 19:14, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Please note that I said most, not all. -Razorflame (contributions) Talk 19:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I know, I was quoting Huji, not you. But don't worry Huji, it was all in good humour.

Gwib^-(talk)- 19:17, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Forgot a period up there Gwib :) -Razorflame (contributions) Talk 19:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Apparently, I reached here when the funny part had chilled out! Anyways ... - Huji ^reply 07:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

So What's Going On?

Is the process still frozen? Or we never going to have VG Articles again? Will Homer jump Springfield Gorge? I think we should know! Trevor "Tinkleheimer" Haworth 19:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

To get the process going, I have made several new articles that are based on the VGA process and have to do with good articles. They are:

• • Category:Good articles
    
  • Category:Proposed good articles
    
  • Wikipedia:Good articles
    
  • Wikipedia:Proposed good articles
    
  • Wikipedia:Requirements for good articles
    
  • Template:Pgood
    
  • Template:Good
    
  • Template:Good-large
    

Feel free to edit these as necessary. Thamusemeantfan 22:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I have posted a reminder to the community on Simple talk. Good work on those pages, Thamusemeantfan! However, so that we don't get too distracted, I would suggest waiting until we decide on the VGA criteria before we get too wrapped up in the GA criteria. Some people feel that the old VGA criteria shouldn't be the new GA criteria, they think that the GA standards should be lower than what you have proposed at Wikipedia:Requirements for good articles. I am not one of them, but you may want to see User:Eptalon/GOOD for an example. At any rate, let's try to focus for now on what the new VGA criteria should be, and then we can move onto deciding on the GA criteria. · Tygrrr... 22:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. What else can we do to finalize the official criteria? We could have a vote, I suppose. What did we do when last deciding the criteria? --Thamusemeantfan 01:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

What I usually do in such circumstances (which appears to be helpful) is to summarize what has been discussed, puttin more pressure on what we have agreed upon, so we know what else to talk about. I'm too busy for it now, so I rather someone else (you?) to do it, please. - Huji ^reply 13:58, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I have just gone through all the points on Wikipedia talk:Requirements for very good articles/New and summarized what has been discussed, what has been agreed on, and what still needs agreement. I am thinking about creating a deadline for discussion and instating what we have at that time. I figure January 14th is as good a day as any other. That will be one month from the original creation date of Wikipedia:Requirements for very good articles/New. · Tygrrr... 17:02, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with everything listed on the new VG article criteria, and as the one who started this all, I'm very happy to see that a deadline for the new criteria is in view! January 14th it is!
Gwib^-(talk)- 17:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Votes made under old criteria

I propose that we "throw out" (i.e. automatically archive) all votes for articles that are currently under the "Voting" section. The reasoning for this would be that the votes were made under the old criteria and are thus not valid under the new criteria. The articles can remain under the voting section if people like, but all votes made before February 9th (the first day the new process was unveiled) will not count. Another option would be to archive all articles in the voting section (i.e. clear it out) and start fresh with brand new proposals. · Tygrrr... 19:02, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Automatic archival. It isn't hard to re-add an article to the list and nothing is lost in their archival. --Gwib ^-(talk)- 19:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that's fair. They can easily be re-nominated if people want. · Tygrrr... 20:27, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Automatic archival indeed. Razorflame 20:27, 12 February 2008 (UTC)