Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/A-Class review

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Contents

[edit] Basis for the initial setup

Most of the setup is from the process over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics. Some other items have been added from various other WikiProject A-Class reviews. Comments are welcome regarding ways to improve the system. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 07:38, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Minimum level of support?

Should we impose a minimum number of support votes to get something passed? This would ensure that there is a sufficient number of people that review the articles. How does 4 supports counting the nominator? --Holderca1 talk 00:14, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. --Rschen7754 (T C) 22:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Works for me as well. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 02:36, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good to me, but I'd change it to four net support. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 02:27, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Over 7 days?

What do we do about discussions that have been open for over 7 days with no votes? I see quite a few of these on the page now, some open since the middle of February, with no votes, much less the 4 net support votes, only comments. Should they be closed? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I would say if no one has addressed the comments, then close. If the nominator is actively working on improving the article it should remain open, they shouldn't be penalized because of lack of reviewers. --Holderca1 talk 18:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] M-28

I think M-28 (Michigan highway) was closed a bit prematurely. From what I can see, O has an objection to the article that hasn't been addressed. While it has the sufficient number of support votes (6), I don't think I would close it with open oppose votes. --Holderca1 talk 15:55, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll wager a guess though that's it's the same objection he's raised at the NY 174 ACR that Polaron objected to being a valid objection (a skewed view of English grammar.) The only other thing he objected to was citations in the lead, which per WP:LEAD, M-28 follows. In fact given a comment made about this at the NY 174 ACR, it's been mentioned at WT:USRD to formulated a more concrete project guideline about citations in the lead, where consensus now seems to be leaning away from redundant citations. Given that those were his last objections, I'll leave it to others to decide if closing it was valid. We already had O mention if it was proper for someone voting in an ACR close the review, and decided that where possible, we should get a third party to close it. In the event that all active editors participate, we'll discuss that situation then. Imzadi1979 (talk) 15:41, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Procedure wording issues

The procedure, as currently worded, seems to omit the fact that this review process is also intended to be used to nominate an A-Class article for demotion to the sub-A classes (either GA or B depending if it went through GA). As it reads right now (particularly the "Participating in discussions" section), it covers only the promotion half of this process. I'll look into rewording it in the days to come if no one else does by that time. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 14:55, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, for the most part they should be pretty similar although the nominator should list what is wrong with the article so someone can fix it. The voting procedure would be reversed as a support vote would indicate that you support demotion (which should require something that can be fixed to sway you the other way). We should probably require a person that is nominating an article for demotion to contact the person that originally nominated the article and any other major contributors to the article. --Holderca1 talk 15:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd only modify that to suggest we use the terms keep or demote as appropriate instead of support and oppose. Imzadi1979 (talk) 04:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Absentee commentors

Since this process is billed as aiming to "provide a FAC-style venue without the FAC-style atmosphere", I think we should do something about a problem with the FAC atmosphere that I sadly see slipping into ACR. People leaving a laundry list of comments (sometimes even with an oppose) and then wandering off and not checking the nomination again. It is extremely frustrating for a nominator to fix all of a person's concerns, only for it to be to no avail in winning the person over to the support column.

I would propose something along the lines of "If someone asserts all concerns raised by a reviewer have been addressed, and the reviewer does not reply within 5 days (or at the close of the nomination, whichever is first), then the comment counts as a support". This helps motivate commentors in opposition to a proposal to watch over the nomination. Also, if someone says "Fixed", and it hasn't been fixed, all that needs to be done by the original reviewer is to pipe up and say "No, it hasn't," and outline why, so those concerns can be fixed, and eventually the commentor will be satisfied. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:05, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Support — I can support this proposal. It sounds very reasonable. Imzadi1979 (talk) 03:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Support but we should explicitly note when a bunch of comments has been turned to a support. --Rschen7754 (T C) 03:43, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Comment: I've already run into this as GA reviewer. Leaving a message on my talk page helps me, and I'm sure other reviewers, a lot, especially when I'm doing 5 reviews in parallel. (After the GA backlog is down to a reasonable level, I'll consider doing A-level reviews.) —Rob (talk) 04:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong oppose - I specifically put my comments behind a comments rather than a oppose for a reason. I don't catch every problem and I typically want to see what other reviewers have to say and before I will give my support. If this is how it is going to be handled, than I will just stop reviewing articles. --Holderca1 talk 16:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
That's all well and good, but that's what the peer review process we have (which is seriously neglected, by the way) is for. While ACR is can certainly be used to highlight issues, that should primarily be done at PR. The main point of ACR is so we can decide promote/not promote. Really, we should be able to decide these things in 7 days, but everyone's commenting and nobody's voting, so it's bogging the process down to a painful level. M-35's review has been open since the end of February simply because nobody is voting either way on it. And besides, if the commenter isn't going to support you even if you fix their concerns, what's the point in fixing them? I mean, yeah, it makes the article better, but... —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
The issue is that we don't have enough reviewers, I haven't had time to make full reviews of the articles that are currently being reviewed, I spent about a minute on each review. Like I said, if someone is going to come along and change my vote (or lack thereof) without my consent, then I am going to refrain from submitting comments at all, because I don't want it to look like I support an article I haven't even fully reviewed. --Holderca1 talk 10:59, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok then. I would comment on some, but that would mean I couldn't close any. And the last time that I commented on one and closed it, someone got all bent out of shape with me, so I'm not doing that again. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Oh, and if nobody's voting on anything in this process, I don't see any reason for it to exist. If nobody votes and everyone just comments, then we can't decide pass/not pass on A-Class, and this just turned into a sexed-up peer review. So if that trend continues, I think we should just deprecate ACR in favor of HWY/PR. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:47, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Deprecate this process in favor of one that works even worse...good call. Anyway, the reason I leave comments first is that I only look for blatant flaws to begin with for the sake of time. I haven't had time lately to give anything a full review, and to be honest I still don't. The essence is this: there are only about a half-dozen people that participate in this process, so anytime there's more than one article nominated, there's going to automatically be a backlog since I doubt this process is the highest priority item of most of said participants. – TMF 03:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
There is nothing wrong with closing reviews out that you have commented on. If I recall correctly, the one you closed out that you are referring to had open oppose votes that hadn't been addressed. I even think the nominator of the article responded to that oppose vote by saying that he already had enough support votes, so he wasn't going to worry about that oppose. If an article has nothing but the required number of support votes, there isn't a problem with closing them out. I have closed out several that I have commented on and no one has had an issue with it. Also, I don't see the big rush here, there isn't that big of a backlog, only four articles presently. If you don't have the patience to deal with this process, then take the article straight to FA. --Holderca1 talk 10:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose per discussion above. That, and frankly it's just wrong to change someone's vote. If someone forgot about their ACR comments, nudge them a little bit on their talk page or on IRC to get them to take a second look at the article. If they've suddenly disappeared off Wikipedia, well, that kinda sucks, but I think 99% of the time, people don't start off opposing, so at least it doesn't get stuck as a permanent negative vote. (Plus, God willing, people won't suddenly disappear, so it's a moot point. :-P) Basically what I'm saying is that you have to suck it up and give the process time to work. Give the reviewers a chance to give the article a second look to catch anything they may have missed, and more importantly, confirm that their concerns were addressed to their liking.

    On the tangential issue, I agree that this process has become somewhat redundant to peer review, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. By making it peer-review style, I think it just helps more articles get to A-class by showing people exactly what they need to do, and encouraging it to get done. If we were to deprecate one (not that we should), it should be WP:HWY/PR, not this one. -- Kéiryn talk 15:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

The issue with deprecating HWY PR in favor of this is that it leaves non-USRD articles out in the cold, so to speak. However, non-USRD articles never got any kind of meaningful response there anyway so it'd probably be no different in practice. :P
The fact that this has become somewhat of a peer review (people oppose/comment, nominator fixes concerns, people support) does contribute to the backlog somewhat, since an article that is not up to snuff and not fixed during the process will be pushed through (and failed) much more quickly than those that undergo reviews and edits. But I see this as more of an unavoidable consequence than something that can be or needs to be fixed. Really, the only solutions that will both unquestionably work and make perfect sense are to 1) get more reviewers and 2) be attentive of the review: to the commenter/opposer, if your concerns have been fixed, strike them and support if desired. The first item is out of anyone's control; the second is well within. – TMF 16:36, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vote counting

I think there's a fundamental flaw in the way we count votes, namely counting the nomination as a support vote. Granted I haven't seen that many articles go through this process, but from what I've seen, it always goes the same way. Someone nominates an article, and suggests it get promoted to A-class, even though it's really not ready yet. Then people suggest a bunch of changes, the article gets fixed, and those people vote support. Basically what I'm saying is that I don't really think a support vote before the article gets fixed should count the same as a support vote after the article gets fixed, if you catch my drift. From what I've seen, other procedures on Wikipedia work the same way, i.e. the original nominator can't vote in a good article review.

Plus, it seems we're only counting the nomination if they explicitly stated that they want to promote the article, which essentially means we're punishing editors for their honesty/humbleness when they give no explicit opinion.

It doesn't matter much to me if we reduce the number of net supports required to 3 if we discount the nominator, or keep it at 4 – I'm just trying to point out that it seems really odd to count the nominator as a support vote. (God I hope any of this made sense.) -- Kéiryn talk 15:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I think I agree with this sentiment; I never really understood why the nomination counts as a vote, since that's not how either GA or FA (the two processes that sandwich this one on the scale) does it. To be honest, I think the only Wikipedia process that counts the nomination in a tally is RFA—and that's only because the nominator is allowed to vote. – TMF 16:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
FL counts the nominator, but in all honesty it doesn't really matter, we could change it to 3 votes not counting the nominator. I also don't understand why "net" was added. Is that suppose to mean support votes counting the nominator? --Holderca1 talk 17:05, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Net means for every oppose vote the article gains, it needs an additional support vote along with the minimum required number of support votes. See wikt:net as an adjective. – TMF 17:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
So if an article had 10 support votes, and 6 oppose votes, it would pass? Not sure I completely agree with that. If the oppose votes have valid concerns that can be corrected, they should be addressed prior to being closed out. I also believe that if a voter votes oppose and all of their issues have been resolved, but they don't come back to review the fixes and strike their vote, then it would fall upon the person closing it to decide whether to discount that oppose vote, but not changing it to support as the above proposal suggests. --Holderca1 talk 17:22, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
From the ACR page: "Please remember that the process is not entirely a vote, and articles with majority support can still fail if they don't fully meet the criteria." If it has six oppose votes, 1) it probably doesn't meet the criteria anyway and 2) someone spammed the ACR in a high-traffic location since I don't foresee any ACR getting six votes period anytime soon (and certainly not 16 as your example above has). The net is intended to prevent articles that have three or four supports and one legitimate oppose from passing without discussion of the opposer's issues. – TMF 17:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
The 16 votes were just a hypothetical situation. I just don't want to see a nomination get closed out if it has 5 support votes on day 6, then on day 7, someone with an issue with it and votes oppose is just ignored without addressing their issues. --Holderca1 talk 18:39, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
That situation could occur even if supports are counted without factoring in opposes. Anyway, I was under the impression that four net support votes was the minimum needed for a successful nomination and was in no way a threshold for automatic closure, especially if there are open concerns. Going back to your hypothetical example above, 10-6 isn't consensus - I certainly wouldn't promote the article with that tally (plus as I said before, an article with that bad of a support percentage probably wouldn't be that good anyway). – TMF 20:08, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
The reason I bring it up is because of this comment [1], with the nominator basically ignoring a commentor's concerns because the nomination would meet the time requirement and the net level of support. --Holderca1 talk 20:27, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Hm...yeah, that's really not the attitude that nominators should have since the 7-day period and four net support things are the minimum requirements for an ACR. Now, if the nominator thinks that the opposer's concerns aren't valid, that's one thing, but to dismiss them just because "it currently enjoys the necessary level of support to be passed" is sort of both a slap in the face of the reviewer and not really what this process is about. – TMF 22:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

So... were we pondering actually changing this? -- Kéiryn talk 16:47, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

IMO the change should be made. – TMF 00:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
So do we continue to require 4 net supports, or only 3 now that we're discounting the nominator? -- Kéiryn talk 01:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I say 4 net excluding the nominator. The more eyes that are required to look over the article the better it is in the long run. – TMF 01:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Agreed as the nominator support is usually a throwaway support. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:53, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Okay, so basically we are now requiring one more support vote? Before it was three not counting the nominator, now its four? If so, are the articles currently nominated subject to this change, or new noms from this point forward? --Holderca1 talk 02:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it would essentially require one more support vote in most cases. IMHO, common sense would dictate that it would apply to any new noms, not any of the articles currently nominated. -- Kéiryn talk 02:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I-15 in AZ

If someone wouldn't mind closing out the I-15 in AZ review, it would be appreciated. I would do it myself, but to avoid the appearance of a COI, I will refrain. It meats the required support and time to pass. I have already updated the articles talk page to make it easier, so all that is needed is to close out the discussion. Thanks. --Holderca1 talk 15:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)