Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 08:44, 27 March 2006

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In subsection A below, listed are articles which are missing from the Misplaced Pages:Good articles. They were found by looking in the categories in subsection C. One can add more categories to be searched to subsection C, see some suggestions in subsection D.

All this process can be restarted by clicking on the link at the bottom of subsection D.

Please note that anything around here is editable, but please don't modify the lines of the form

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or their order.

A: Articles missing from the Misplaced Pages:Good articles

B: Place here articles not wanted either in the Misplaced Pages:Good articles or in subsection A.

C: Categories to be searched

The bot will look for potential additions to the Misplaced Pages:Good articles in this list of categories. You may add any other categories to this list, for example from subsection D below. Use the format ] (the colon (:) shows up twice!).

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Move up to subsection C any categories which the bot should search for missing articles in the Misplaced Pages:Good articles.

Archives
October 2005 – January 2006 - initial discussions and debates 8 January 2005 – March 2006

List updater

In subsection A below, listed are articles which are missing from the Misplaced Pages:Good articles. They were found by looking in the categories in subsection C. One can add more categories to be searched to subsection C, see some suggestions in subsection D.

All this process can be restarted by clicking on the link at the bottom of subsection D.

Please note that anything around here is editable, but please don't modify the lines of the form

<!-- bottag:X:begin -->

or their order.

A: Articles missing from the Misplaced Pages:Good articles

B: Place here articles not wanted either in the Misplaced Pages:Good articles or in subsection A.

Lostprophets capitalization reasons

C: Categories to be searched

The bot will look for potential additions to the Misplaced Pages:Good articles in this list of categories. You may add any other categories to this list, for example from subsection D below. Use the format ] (the colon (:) shows up twice!).

D: Potential searchable categories

Move up to subsection C any categories which the bot should search for missing articles in the Misplaced Pages:Good articles.

A version with icons

Adding to what was there already, I've had a bash at putting icons in for each heading. I've used yellow as a complimentary colour to the blue. I realise that there are a couple of display issues with it at the minute but for look and feel, has anyone any feedback for an approach like this? (or is it all regret code?...) The page is here, and it actually only adds 2 kb to the page size. Cheers SeanMack 16:11, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I've sorted out the glitches, checked it in IE and firefox and the colours(colors) are web safe. Does anyone know if there is functionality to +Show and +Hide for these templates for the whole page? I've had a play with it and it helps me at least see the conceptual groupings a bit easier. Let me know how your milage varies... SeanMack 16:46, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Anyone there? SeanMack 11:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I like the look of that - I am experimenting with a slightly different version at User:TheGrappler/Good3. I thought it looked better with the first colour put darker (blue) to give it a clearer definition. I changed a couple of icons too. What I am hoping to do is find a way to reorder the articles so that there are no repeated subheadings. This may be easier said than done! I also want to find a way to deal with a few anomalies e.g. military history is split between History and War. I am also in favour of removing the article counts after each subheading - they tend to get out of date and I can't really see the benefit from them. TheGrappler 18:33, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean the main title bar and the first heading being the same? If so - just remove the first heading, eg Art, architecture, and archaeology User:SeanMack/sandbox/Good2. I agree with making blue the first heading. No strong feelings on the icon changes either way. I agree the sub counts don't add much value.

My thoughts on military history, historical wars are part of history so they should be in History. War and military for me should only be for warfare and military articles for the present day. This would resolve the problem(?) I guess there are going to be many cases where an article could feasibly belong in multiple areas. Categories are one way that this issue was tackled, so that an article can be grouped into higher level amalgamations of related information. I'm not sure that our list needs to do that. I think each article should go into the most appropriate section even if it could feasibly fit into others, if someone clicks on the article, they will find related articles through Categories. Do you think it worthwhile pursuing the look and feel I suggested? There wasn't any interest apart from yourself... Cheers SeanMack 05:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it looks very nice! It makes the page look more "professional" IMHO. Walkerma 08:49, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the colour scheme or whether icons are the right way to go. Personally is my favourite. But keep up the good work. Cedars 09:32, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

If you don't repeat the first heading then you can't do section editing, which is a real shame, because that makes editing so much easier. My feeling is that the sections can be broken down, like the Transport one is, so that becomes a non-issue. If we are going to break down in the same way as WP:FA, then military history would go under military, even if that seems strange. Not sure what to do about crimes and criminals, probably they should be filed under Law (there doesn't seem to be a precedent on WP:FA). Similarly, even if it is underpopulated, we ought to keep "Awards and decorations" - given the number of FAs for that topic, I am sure there are some more good articles out there. Does anybody object to removing the section article counts? I can't see the benefit of them if we have another way of counting up the total number of articles, and they add to the maintenance issues of the page. TheGrappler 12:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Complete list?

May I know if Misplaced Pages:Good articles/Archive 3 represents a complete and exclusive list of all good articles which have gone through the due process of nomination and approval, and if not, where may I find such a list? I noticed that the {{good article}} template was applied to Celtic F.C. but I can't find it on Misplaced Pages:Good articles/Archive 3, so would like to check whether it's an erroneous edit or not. Thank for any help in advance. --Pkchan 17:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

If it isn't a mistake, it wasn't labelled correctly, good articles are supposed to have a {{GA}} stamp on the talk pages rather than a dot in the corner, and I did not see someone comment on it. Check to see if it meets the criteria, (it shouldn't take long) and if it does, put the GA banner on the talk page, and if it doesn't, just remove the dot. Homestarmy 17:08, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I have removed the dot for the time being and left a message on its talk page to notify its authors to go through the due course from the beginning if they are to represent Celtic F.C. as a good article. --Pkchan 17:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation as a criterion?

I have come across some GAs that are uncategorised. There is actually a clean-up tag for this - it would be odd to have something requiring clean-up still being listed as a "good" article! Perhaps one of the criteria at WP:WIAGA should be that the article is appropriately categorised? TheGrappler 19:41, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

It should be a given that a GA has none of the flaws that would lead to it being listed under one of the {{opentask}} categories: being a stub, lacking sufficient verification, needing wikifying, NPOV issues, clearly out-of-date, etc. Sad to say, not only is Misplaced Pages uneven in its depth of detail & use of references between articles, but some articles are very uneven -- quite good paragraphs are mixed in with slabs of text that read as if they were written on the bus on the way to school. (I know of one article that I originally wrote, & have since found quite mangled by someone with a POV to push.) If you want to nominate an article with a cleanup problem, please fix the article first. -- llywrch 04:23, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

It should be a given - but this particular criterion isn't actually explicitly stated (infact it's not even a condition for FAs, and I have seen poorly categorized FAs in the past too). What I found interesting was that I came across an article somebody else had listed as good, thought it a bit odd that it required cleanup, then realised that it actually did meet all the conditions at WP:WIAGA. Just suggests to me that this particular "given" might need to be made explicit! TheGrappler 05:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Heh. Give the issue some time, & I expect you'll start seeing FAs delisted because they aren't properly categorized. (Every time I look in to that forum, it seems that the denizens have again raised the bar.) But if we insist on this for GAs, it doesn't mean that the nominator can't fix these (relatively) minor issues first. -- llywrch 07:03, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Bot Request

I see we have a bot that determines what articles are tagged for GA, but aren't on the list. Could someone make a bot that updates the GA counts automatically, since not everyone has been doing that manually? Seems like a simple bot to make... and much less wiki-server intensive than the current bot we have. Fieari 20:03, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposed new look for Good article page

I am proposing a new look for the page based on previous work mentioned on this page already. Thanks to TheGrappler for working on this and feedback from Cedars and Walkerma.

The Proposed new look.

Points to note:

• We have kept the colour scheme in line with the project page as it exists presently bearing in mind the comments by User:Cedars. The list seems to be clearer starting with the darker colour - blue.
• It includes editable sections to facilitate moving things around within a section. Without this I would not have suggested it...
• It provides an excellent structure for growing the article list, without overwhelming - this is especially important as I think the good articles list will eventually dwarf the FA list by a large margin.
• Many new sub-sections have been introduced to help group together related articles. A large amount of work went in here from User:TheGrappler, and I approve of the structures within the main sections.
• Sub-section counts have been removed. I agree with the comment that these make the page higher maintenance without adding a huge amount of value.
• More distinct article separator - namely this thing here: ♦ separates things visually ♦ quite well ♦ but isn't an image ♦

I want to get feedback from as many editors as possible and hope that you will support this new look. I have used it myself to update the page slightly from the version of the page that I took at one stage, as a test of it's usefulness. I found it quite easy to find and change sections and sub-sections. It is a bit out of date at present. I didn't want to spend too much time keeping it in synch with the current page unless there was support to implement it. I make a commitment that if it is accepted I will ensure that all the articles currently in the GA page will be transferred into this page before implementation. Lets be bold! Thanks for your time. Any feedback can be either here or my talk page. Regards all. SeanMack 16:37, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Replies to feedback

Thanks for the feedback so far. To reply to Joturner, I did try the blue background for the top sections but thought that it didn't look that good in big sections, also I think the new proposal is a big step away from the FA look and I like the fact that at least the top section mirrors the FA page. Also regarding the spacing you mention - In a way I agree with you if the list was to stay around the size that it is now, however I do think that the sections will eventually contain quite a lot of articles as I think there is a huge number of potential GAs out there. I think eventually the extra "white space" will help to make the sections not look too crowded. If I do implement the change I feel it is not mine and anyyone of course is always able to tweak it, maybe that is the way forward? Does anyone have any thoughts whether I should just be bold and make the change? Or, should there be a vote? Please let me know as I have some free time this weekend to make sure that the current list can be done in the new format and I am keen to either do it soon or put it off indefinitely until I have free time again. SeanMack 11:30, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

If I am to include a count of articles, should it be section counts or fine grained sub-section counts?

Mmounties, that seems to be the default operation of the SHow Hide buttons. I agree it would be good if it did what you suggest but I have no idea how to do it...

Looks good to me! Homestarmy 17:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Looks great to me - only thing is that I did quite like the subsection counts. I think Cedars' GAAuto script can calculate them so maintaining need not be a huge bind. Otherwise, excellent stuff, it looks very clear and reader-friendly. Worldtraveller 19:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Overall, I think it's great. However, as Worldtraveller said, I like the subsection counts. What I don't like is the total article count (although I don't think that will be removed) because people forget to update that far more often since it requires making clicking an additional edit link. In addition, that number is hard to verify (unless someone loves counting or adding numbers). I think if you're going to go with the blue color scheme, you should change the regions at the top to shades of blue. Lastly, section titles and links appear to be spaced out too much. Maybe if you eliminate the line break between the bolded section titles and the links that follow (but keep the line break before the bolded section titles), that would look a lot better. Overall though, SeanMack, your attempt to create a more aesthetically pleasing Good Articles page is going well. joturner 23:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Like the new look - the extra horizontal rule was a bit confusing at first but now I know it's to allow editing of entire sections I'm fine with it. Cedars 15:06, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Like the new look as well. I also like the subsection counts. One more thing I noticed is that if I click to expand a bar towards the bottom of the page, it expands but it doesn't scroll down the page to make it visible. Would be good if it automatically moved the page focus down to include the entire expanded navigation box. --Mmounties (Talk) 15:23, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

The fact that the page doesn't scroll down with the bar annoyed me too, but I don't know how to get that fixed. I think the new design is a significant improvement, especially bearing in mind potential expansion in the future. TheGrappler 13:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

War and military

There doesn't appear to be any distinction as to why articles are placed under this heading, versus under its sub-heading, "Military history." Any thoughts?--Lordkinbote 04:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I have already proposed to move military history articles into War and Military as part of the new look proposal. TheGrappler 20:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Delisting for instability

I have a question after reading the following at Misplaced Pages:Good articles/Disputes#Zoroastrianism (note that I am not taking any position on that particular article; this question is a meta-question about the process):

"If there's a dispute, it isn't stable, and thus isn't a GA. I've put up the DelistedGA tag, and am removing it from the list now."

It seems to me that this bar is a bit low for delisting—though I have no problem with it for initial listing. If an article is listed as a GA, and for whatever reason, I don't want it to be listed, it sounds like I can just start a dispute in order to get it delisted, even if it otherwise meets the criteria. In egregious cases, I might get called for violating WP:POINT, but disputes occur on all sorts of articles, even featured articles, all the time. The mere existence of an occasional dispute doesn't seem like it should be a disqualifying factor.

The FAC process has a rule against inactionable objections disqualifying an article to prevent exactly this sort of thing, where a single editor just doesn't want an article listed no matter how much it is improved. Keeping an article stable seems inactionable to me—there's nothing I can do, as an editor who wants an article I've invested time in to be recognized as a GA, to prevent another editor from nuisance disputes. Am I missing something here? --TreyHarris 04:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I think article stability more refers to an article not being the subject of a massive, constant edit war, with daily or even more frequent significant changes. A good example of this is the George W. Bush entry. For those type of entries, an article may be listed one day and have to be delisted the next. OTOH, I took a look at the Zoroastrianism history and didn't seen anything that would cause the article to be significantly unstable, so I don't think it should have been delisted. General disputes and hashing out of issues shouldn't keep an article from being a GA, nor should single-editor vandalism/nuisance edits. Air.dance 05:02, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

No...

I can't believe we're going to add {{Good article}} in the article namespace. It seems very stupid to tell the reader 'you know, we consider this article good'. It should be the standard. Yes, I know many articles are substandard, and I do see some merit in WP:GA, but I think it is a very bad idea to indicate this in the article namespace, especially since the number of GA's is bound to raise very high. Again, it should be the standard visitors expect. — mark ✎ 09:00, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

We're discussing this at some length over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Good_articles#Icon. Would you come and comment on what we've come up with? Air.dance 09:14, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

i also oppose the proposal, GA should remain talk page only. btw, where did you see that it was gonna be added to article namespace? Zzzzz 09:09, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Air.dance, thanks for pointing me to the discussion. Zzzz, just check 'what links here' from {{Good article}}. — mark ✎ 09:21, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

so can whoever ran the bot to auto-place GA tags on hundreds of article pages without bothering to consult anyone on this major policy change first, please now run a bot to remove them all again. thanks. Zzzzz 09:31, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Implementation of proposed new look

I jumped in and made the change. I spent a long time trying to ensure all the recent changes made it in, and getting the article counts right. Please help fix it if I have missed anything. I also put biography formats in surname, firstname order which they should be for look up purposes. Regards SeanMack 14:56, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, man. I can tell you worked really hard on this and I definitely appreciate it, but.. I don't like it at all. I think the original layout (similar to FA) was much cleaner and easier to navigate and edit. We'll wait for other opinions before doing anything, though. Thanks for the hard work. Air.dance 01:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate you prefer the FA version, but would you agree that the potential number of good articles will be massive? I don't think that the FA style with a very long list will be that easy to work with imo. Are there any specifics you can name that could be worked on? It's pretty dis-heartening for someone to say they don't like a change without some constructive ideas for improvement. Or even if you think there is no future in it, it would be helpful to hear why. Regards SeanMack 04:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC).

Hey, I was just on my way here to comment again! :D Actually, the more I play around with it, the more it's growing on me. I hadn't really thought about how many articles would end up being listed, hence needing a hide/show feature, and that is definitely something you've addressed well with your change. There are two main things that bug me -- the fact that the icons are clickable and the alternating blue/white title bars. I know you may not be able to do anything about the clickable graphics, since they need to link back to their templates, but I find myself clicking on them unconsciously to expand the section and end up at the template page. As for the blue/white, I think I'd prefer all white, since we already have the graphics for color, and the blue gives it a clunky, My First Computer feel. I apologise for not being more specific in my original comment -- I was caught up in the template argument. You've done a fantastic job and the more I use this new format, the more I like it. Air.dance 04:35, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks for expanding your points, I do appreciate all feedback even when negative - it's an opportunity to improve, I like to think. We could actually do something with the icons. If you check Misplaced Pages's sister projects on the main page you'll see they use a hack to make the icons a clickable navigation aid. To link an icon to an article or portal would be easy. However I'm thinking it would either take an expert template designer or a developer to implement an icon click to "Show" the section. I have no idea how to keep track of the javascript needed to do the show and hide.... I just tried to expand on what had already been suggested and approved of. I have no strong opinions on alternating colours or even what the colours should be. Feel free to have a play and improve it. If there is support to link the icons to certain pages I would implement that. Regards SeanMack 05:47, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

If we are going for a new look...

I think that the introductory text on WP:GA could be seriously cut down on, on the model of WP:FA, so that it just includes the basics: brief introduction (mention difference between FA and GA), article count, summary of criteria with link to WP:WIAGA, nominations and disputes procedure, a note on page maintenance with a link to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Good articles, then straight on with the article list. My proposed look would be:

The following is a proposed Misplaced Pages policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption.

I have consciously banged on and on about the criteria rather than use the word "good" since I have noticed in talk pages and disputes, people have been using the subjective standard ("this article isn't good, in my opinion") rather than actually assessing against the opinion. I fear my truncation misses some of the intricacies (e.g. is the GAF template meant to be applied or is it just a suggestion?) and doesn't go into as much detail about being bold not being the same as being brutal. However, I thought some of that was more appropriate for WIAGA (one of the reasons I mentioned the criteria so many times). At the moment, the introductory text reads like the cross between a a mission statement, a call to arms, a justification, a maintenance policy, and a list of GAs. This was probably more appropriate when the system was being established, maybe it's less so now. seems to have struck a better balance; I suppose it is because the FA system is so established, robust and tough, no need is felt to justify its existence! Eventually we ought to get this page into a shape where it doesn't give instructions to readers, as it shouldn't be assumed that readers = editors. TheGrappler 19:25, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Go for it, makes sense to me. SeanMack 01:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Much more streamlined and it doesn't overwhelm the actual list like the current intro. Air.dance 04:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

More Featured articles than Good

There appear to be a fair number more "Featured Articles" than there are "Good Articles." Just a thought, but doesn't that make Misplaced Pages contains many good articles. However, only about 0.1% of our articles are featured articles, which have been thoroughly reviewed and designated as the very best of Misplaced Pages look a little foolish?

Here's why: Both FAs and GAs require referencing. But nobody adds citations without the intent to make an article into FA status. Hence, a majority of articles with footnotes are FAs. Nifboy 04:03, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

This is also why GA nominations shouldn't be a hassle; there are at least 3-4 thousand articles worthy of this status. — Deckiller 04:19, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

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