User talk:Polymathematics

Project News

• There are now 3,301 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. With 1,789 current featured articles, that brings the total of good and featured articles to 5,090!

• The most recently promoted articles are: Hurricane Daniel (2006), Tarbosaurus, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wicca, Seth MacFarlane, Stanley Internment Camp, Hurricane Karen (2007), Interstate 155 (Illinois), Tropical Storm Ingrid (2007), Brian Sings and Swings, Winston Churchill, Mzoli's, John Kefalas, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations has recently exploded to 236 unreviewed articles! Out of 264 total nominations, 17 are on hold, 10 are under review, and one is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Attachment disorder, Byzantium under the Palaiologoi, Byzantium under the Angeloi, Wowowee, Tyrone Wheatley, Mina (singer), Jon Burge, Mercury Hayes, William Lowndes Yancey, and Toni Preckwinkle.

The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (47 articles), Film and cinema (25 articles), Television and journalism (16 articles), Art and architecture (15 articles), and Politics and government (14 articles).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 17 articles up for re-review.

If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!

Reviewer of the Month

Dihydrogen Monoxide is the GAN Reviewer of the Month of December, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 of the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Dihydrogen Monoxide hails from Brisbane (which, incidentally, is almost a GA, kids ;)) and has been editing Wikipedia since August 2006. He mostly likes to review articles relating to music, Australia, or anything else that takes his fancy! He also has two articles waiting, and notes that there's still a huge backlog,... so get cracking!

Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of December include:

• Awadewit (talk · contribs)
• Canadian Paul (talk · contribs)
• Derek.cashman (talk · contribs)
• Drewcifer3000 (talk · contribs)
• Elcobbola (talk · contribs)
• Jackyd101 (talk · contribs)
• Kane5187 (talk · contribs)
• M3tal H3ad (talk · contribs)
• Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs)
• The Rambling Man (talk · contribs)
• VanTucky (talk · contribs)
• Wassupwestcoast (talk · contribs)

Member News

There are now 166 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 7 new members that joined during the month of December:

• Majoreditor (talk · contribs)
• Bernstein2291 (talk · contribs)
• The4325 (talk · contribs)
• Pepsi2786 (talk · contribs)
• Monowi (talk · contribs)
• Rankun (talk · contribs)

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

GAReview Template

Lots of you that frequent WP:GAN have undoubtedly seen the articles under review, marked with "Review - I am reviewing this article. ...". The articles have been marked as being under review by an editor using the {{GAReview}} template. The purpose of this template is essentially to prevent two editors from reviewing the same article at the same time, so it's essentially a common courtesy notice to other editors so that they don't pass or fail an article while you're in the midst of collecting and writing comments. However, just because an article is marked, shouldn't preclude another editor from contributing to the review. If you'd like to review it, go ahead; simply collect your comments and write them down on the article's talk page – but don't pass or fail the article – leave that to the other reviewer.

To use this template yourself, simply write "#:{{GAReview}} ~~~~" on the line immediately following the article's nomination at WP:GAN. You can even leave additional comments as well (e.g. "#:{{GAReview}} I will finish my review in the next 24 hours. ~~~~"). Reviewers marking articles with this template should also observe some common etiquette; please don't mark more than 1-3 articles as being under review at a time, and please try and finish your review within 3-5 days of marking the article.

GA Sweeps

After openly requesting the community for more participants into the Sweeps, we have 3 more members on the board. They are (in no particular order) Canadian Paul, VanTucky, and Masem. Canadian Paul will be sweeping "Middle East and the World" articles. VanTucky will be sweeping "Religion, mysticism, and mythology" and "Literature" articles. Masem will be sweeping "Television episodes". We're still looking for more reviewers. Interested individuals should contact OhanaUnited for details.

At this moment, participation in the sweeps project is by invitation only, as we desire experienced reviewers who have a thorough and extensive knowledge of the criteria. This is to ensure that articles that have "fallen through the cracks" would be found and removed, and that additional articles don't fall through the cracks during the sweep.

Currently, there are 16 members working on the project, and we have reviewed 74 articles in December 2007. Of those that are swept, 275 articles are kept as GA, 126 articles are delisted, and 5 promoted to FA.

Did You Know,...

• ... that the total number of good and featured articles is now over 5000?
• ... that GA was formed on October 11, 2005 and was formerly called "Half-decent articles"?
• ... that there is a bot (StatisticianBot) that gives a daily report on GAN?
• ... that many discussions were made over the years on whether GA should have a symbol placed on the main article space, yet at the end always removed?
• ... that there was a proposal to change the GA symbol to a green featured star?

From the Editors

Happy New Year, everyone! I'm just filling in for Dr. Cash as he's busy (or away) in real life. This explains why I wasn't prepared for a full-length article on GA process, and instead I resort to a tiny DYK for GA.

• OhanaUnited

Happy New Year as well! I'm still here, and haven't totally disappeared. I had to cut back on editing and reviewing during the month of December as I made the transition from Flagstaff, Arizona to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I should be about settled in the Keystone State, so I'll be contributing more to Wikipedia again in the new year. Thanks to OhanaUnited for putting together much of the content for this newsletter! He's been working hard with the Sweeps, and the 'Did You Know' section is also a great idea, so I think that will become a regular feature now! I also figured out how to have a collapsible newsletter, so that will change our delivery options a bit. Cheers!

• Dr. Cash

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
• OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps correspondent)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

Project News

• There are now 3,485 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 206 unreviewed articles. Out of 251 total nominations, 37 are on hold, 7 are under review, and 1 is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Johan Derksen, Trafford, J. Michael Bailey, Greg Skrepenak, Paleolithic-style diet, Alan Dershowitz, Natalee Holloway, Slovenian presidential election, 2007, San Francisco Municipal Railway, and Marcela Agoncillo.

The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (57 articles), Theatre film and drama (34 articles), Music (19 articles), Transport (17 articles), Politics and government (16 articles), World history (13 articles), and Meteorology and atmospheric sciences (13 articles).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 8 articles up for re-review.

If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!

GA Sweeps Update

During January, 57 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 35 were kept as GA, 20 delisted, 9 currently on hold or at GAR, and 3 were exempted as they are now Featured Articles.

Reviewer of the Month

Ealdgyth is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for January, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Ealdgyth, known in real life as Victoria Short, hails from Central Illinois, and has been editing Wikipedia since May 26, 2007. In this short time, she has made significant contributions to 9 Good Articles, including Baldwin of Exeter and Hubert Walter. Her interests in editing are in the areas of the Middle Ages, History, and horses. Outside of Wikipedia, she is starting her own photography business, and owns three horses. She likes to read science fiction, history, and geneology books. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for January!

Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include:

• AnonEMouse (talk · contribs)
• Canadian Paul (talk · contribs)
• Casliber (talk · contribs)
• Derek.cashman (talk · contribs)
• Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs)
• Drewcifer3000 (talk · contribs)
• Jackyd101 (talk · contribs)
• Johnfos (talk · contribs)
• M3tal H3ad (talk · contribs)
• Miranda (talk · contribs)
• Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs)
• VanTucky (talk · contribs)

Member News

There are now 176 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 15 new members that joined during the month of January:

• Atlantik (talk · contribs)
• Auawise (talk · contribs)
• Cyclonenim (talk · contribs)
• Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs)
• Ddstretch (talk · contribs)
• Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• FamicomJL (talk · contribs)
• Hamiltonstone (talk · contribs)
• jackturner3 (talk · contribs)
• Kbthompson (talk · contribs)
• Keilana (talk · contribs)
• Miranda (talk · contribs)
• pcbene (talk · contribs)
• Skeeker (talk · contribs)
• Snowolf (talk · contribs)

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

On Hold versus Failing an Article

This month, I thought I'd focus on a less technical and more of a procedural issue at WP:GAN – determining what the appropriate course of action to take when reviewing an article. Currently, there are four options to decide what to do with an article:

• Passing – it meets all six of the good article criteria; add it to WP:GA and add {{ArticleHistory}} or {{GA}} to the article's talk page.
• Failing it – it does not meet the criteria; remove the article's listing from WP:GAN and add {{ArticleHistory}} or {{failedGA}} to the article's talk page.
• On Hold – The article meets most of the criteria, but might fall short in a few areas; keep it listed at WP:GAN, add #: {{GAOnHold|ArticleName}} ~~~~ below the listing and add {{GAonhold}} to the article's talk page.
• Second Opinion – Similar to the on hold option, except an editor is either inexperienced or not knowledgeable enough about a given topic and asks another reviewer to offer another opinion before passing or failing; add #: {{GA2ndopinion|ArticleName}} ~~~~ to WP:GAN below the article's listing and add {{GA2ndoptalk}} to the article's talk page.

So how to you know when an article fails outright, or fails initially, but meets "enough" of the criteria to be placed on hold? The answer to this question probably varies by about the same amount as there are reviewers of Good Articles! Everybody treats this slightly differently. The most important thing to consider is that articles should not be on hold for longer than about one week. Although there is no hard and fast time limit for this, most editors would probably agree that five to seven days is enough time to address any GA-related issues with the article to get it to pass. Some editors have extended this a few days in the past, due to other extenuating circumstances, such as an article's primary editor being very busy with school or work, so they have asked for extra time. But as a general rule, a GA nominee that is placed on hold should meet enough of the criteria to be able to be passed within five to seven days. Some examples of articles that might be placed on hold would be:

• the article is mostly complete, but might be missing one topic (subcategory).
• minor copyediting is required (needs a few minor manual of style, spelling, or grammatical fixes.
• mostly well sourced, but missing maybe a handful of references.
• a couple of images need to be tagged with appropriate copyright tags.

On the other hand, an article should be failed if it:

• is missing several topic categories, or there are several sections which are very short (1-3 sentences per section).
• contains numerous sections which are just lists of information, as opposed to written out as prose.
• there's entire sections of text that have no references, or there are a lot of {{cn}} or {{unreferenced}} tags.
• has evidence of an active edit war in the article history.
• has major neutrality issues.
• has any {{cleanup}} or other warning tags in various places.

Did You Know...

• ... that on July 19, 2007, 1,548 good articles that have not been categorized at all were categorized in 15 days?
• ... that in Chinese Wikipedia, articles need to have at least six net support votes before they are promoted to GA?
• ... that the English Wikipedia has the most Good Articles, the German Wikipedia has the second most (at over 2000), followed by the Spanish Wikipedia (at over 800), the Chinese Wikipedia (at over 400), and the French Wikipedia (at over 200)?
• ... that Simple English Wikipedia has zero Good Articles?
• ... that "Sport and games people" category has the most Good Articles?
• ... that Virginia Tech massacre (which is now a featured article) was promoted to GA just only about one month after the shooting incident, but took more than seven months to reach FA status?

From the Editors

Originally, I wasn't planning to do "Did you know" other than as a fill-in for Dr. Cash. However, I decided to continue writing this section until I ran out of ideas.

• OhanaUnited

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

• Dr. Cash

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
• OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

Project News

• There are currently 3,647 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 185 unreviewed articles. Out of 237 total nominations, 42 are on hold, and 10 are under review. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Ian Browne (cyclist), Tony Marchant, Reginald fitz Jocelin, Annie Russell, Brodie Croyle, and Jimmy Moore.

The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (39 articles), Theatre, film, and drama (34 articles), Transport (23 articles), Music (21 articles), Politics and government (18 articles), Culture and society (13 articles), Places (13 articles), and World history (12 articles).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 13 articles up for re-review.

If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!

GA Sweeps Update

Two members joined the sweeps team this month. They are Jwanders and jackyd101. Jwanders swept Physics sub-category quickly and is now sweeping "Astronomy and astrophysics". Meanwhile, jackyd101 is sweeping "Armies, military units and legal issues".

During February, 66 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 33 were kept as GA, 21 delisted, 17 currently on hold or at GAR, and 1 was exempted as they are now Featured Articles.

Reviewer of the Month

Blnguyen is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for February, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Blnguyen is from South Australia and has been editing Wikipedia since 2005. He was also the reviewer for the month of December 2007, so this marks the second time that he has been GAN's Top Reviewer for the Month. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for February!

Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include:

• Blnguyen (talk · contribs)
• David Fuchs (talk · contribs)
• Derek.cashman (talk · contribs)
• Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs)
• Calbear22 (talk · contribs)
• Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• Jackturner3 (talk · contribs)
• TimVickers (talk · contribs)
• VanTucky (talk · contribs)
• Wrad (talk · contribs)

Member News

There are now 185 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 9 new members that joined during the month of February:

• Bibliomaniac15 (talk · contribs)
• Canyouhearmenow (talk · contribs)
• Chrisisinchrist (talk · contribs)
• Ed! (talk · contribs)
• Juliancolton (talk · contribs)
• Kakofonous (talk · contribs)
• LOTRrules (talk · contribs)
• Matthewedwards (talk · contribs)
• Nousernamesleft (talk · contribs)

Did You Know...

• ...that the shortest timespan for a GA to be listed and subsequently delisted is 8 minutes? (The article is Project Chanology and currently listed on WP:GAR)
• ...that the current nominations system started on March 10, 2006?
• ...that in May 2006, number of GA surpassed number of FA?

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

One GA Requirement - The Lead Section

• By Geometry guy

In this issue, we will focus on one of the requirements for good articles: a good article article should follow Wikipedia's guideline on lead sections. So what does this guideline say, why does it say what it does, and how can good article reviewers help?

The lead section is particularly important, because for many readers, it is the only part of the article which they will read. For instance, they may have come to the article by following a wikilink in another article simply to obtain a quick overview before they continue reading the original article. They may only read the first paragraph, or even the first sentence. On the other hand, one of the joys of Wikipedia is the way that it embodies the endlessly branching tree of knowledge; if a lead is well written, it may encourage even such a reader to read on and learn something new.

This is reflected in the terminology: "lead" is a word taken from journalism, where it recognized that many readers will only read the beginning of a newspaper article, and so it is important to convey the key points first, before going into detail. Note that "lead", in this sense, is pronounced as in "leading question" and is sometimes spelled as "lede" by journalists to distinguish it from lead, the metal, which was once very important in typesetting. Wikipedia supports both spellings.

Wikipedia:Lead section is written with all this in mind, and describes two different roles for the lead: first, it should introduce the topic; second it should summarize the article. This is not always as easy as it seems; indeed, it is almost impossible to write a good lead if the article itself does not cover the topic well. It has a side benefit that an article which satisfies this guideline is probably also broad: if the lead is both a good introduction and a summary, then the article probably covers the main points.

The good article process is often the first place in which an article is judged against this criterion, yet many current good articles may not meet it. A common fault is that the lead is purely an introduction, while the rest of the article contains other information, which should be summarized in the lead, but isn't.

So, how can reviewers help to improve this? One approach is to read the rest of the article, and not the lead, first. Make a note of the significant points discussed in the article. There is usually at least one important issue in each section. Then, go back to the lead and ask the following questions:

• Does the first sentence of the lead define the topic, as described in the article?
• Is the most important information mentioned in the first paragraph?
• Is the lead a suitable length for the article? The lead guideline recommends 2–4 paragraphs depending on the article length, but judgment is more important than counting.
• Are each of the significant topics that you noted mentioned in the lead?

If the answer to each of these questions is "yes", then the article probably meets the guideline. If not, you may be able to fix it yourself by summarizing the article. If you can't, then it suggests that there are not only problems with the lead, but also the rest of the article. That is the beauty of Wikipedia:Lead section.

Finally, there isn't universal agreement on whether the lead should contain inline citations. As long as the material in the lead is developed and cited elsewhere in the article, then inline citation is not required. There are exceptions, the most significant being quotations and controversial material about living persons.

Good luck helping more articles meet this important criterion!

From the Editors

Well, this is somewhat GA-related but at the same time not totally GA-related. However, I think this is important. Thanks to everyone who supported me at my 2nd RfA. It passed unanimously at 79 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral. As many are impressed by my work in Good Articles processes, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone giving me a very enjoyable time at GA. There are 2 people that I want to explicitly say thank you to. They are Nehrams2020 and Epbr123. They patiently taught me how to do GA reviews properly in summer 2007. I couldn't achieve better without them. Now that I have the mop and the bucket, some of my time will be working on reducing Commons image backlog. Nevertheless, you will still see me once in a while in matters related to GA.

• OhanaUnited

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

• Dr. Cash

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
• OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent)
• Geometry guy (News Correspondent)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

Project News

• There are currently 3,868 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 195 unreviewed articles. Out of 267 total nominations, 57 are on hold, 13 are under review, and 2 are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: A4232 road, New York State Route 63, Great American Boycott, First Great Western, Duck Soup, Sanja Matsuri, Code of Conduct (affiliate marketing), Prospect Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, Aliens (film), and Roanoke Regional Airport.

The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (27 articles), Sports and recreation (25 articles), Transport (24 articles), Music (19 articles), War and military (19 articles), Politics and government (18 articles), Religion, mysticism and mythology (16 articles), Literature (14 articles), World history (14 articles), and Video and computer games (14 articles).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 12 articles up for re-review.

GA Sweeps Update

The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of March, a total of 92 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 74 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and 18 were delisted. There are currently 14 articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions. Congratulations to Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs), who sweeped a whopping 51 articles during the month! Jackyd101 (talk · contribs) also deserves congrats for sweeping a total of 26 articles!

Reviewer of the Month

Dihydrogen monoxide is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for March, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Dihydrogen monoxide hails from Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, and has been editing Wikipedia since April 6, 2007. He has contributed to 8 Featured articles and is an avid reviewer and contributor to the Good articles program. Other reviewers should check out his Noob's Guide to GA Reviewing. Congratulations to Dihydrogen monoxide!

Other outstanding reviewers during the month of March include:

• GaryColemanFan (talk · contribs)
• Limetolime (talk · contribs)
• Malachirality (talk · contribs)
• Nikki311 (talk · contribs)
• Wrad (talk · contribs)

Member News

There are now 195 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 13 new members that joined during the month of March:

• AndreNatas (talk · contribs)
• Dank55 (talk · contribs)
• English836 (talk · contribs)
• ExplorerCY (talk · contribs)
• JayJ47 (talk · contribs)
• Mastrchf91 (talk · contribs)
• MBK004 (talk · contribs)
• Million Moments (talk · contribs)
• Neparis (talk · contribs)
• Nicholas Perkins (talk · contribs)
• NimiTize (talk · contribs)
• PGPirate (talk · contribs)
• Zenlax (talk · contribs)

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

To delist or not to delist, that is the question

So you’ve found an article that, on the face of it, does not merit its good article status. What next? Especially where there are many glaring issues that need addressing, it’s tempting to just revoke its GA status and remove it from the list, but although we are encouraged as editors to be bold, this approach (known to some as "bold delisting") is not recommended good practice. There are many reasons why a listed article might not meet the assessment criteria—it’s always possible that it never did, and was passed in error, but more likely the criteria have changed or the article quality has degraded since its original assessment. Either way, we should treat its reassessment with no less tact and patience than we would a fresh nomination.

This, in fact, provides a good starting point for the delisting process. Approach the article as though it has been nominated for GA review. Read it and the GA criteria carefully, and provide a full reassessment on the article talk page. Explain where and why the article no longer meets the criteria, and suggest remedies.

Having explained why the article no longer meets current GA criteria, allow its editors time to fix it! In keeping with the above approach, it may help to treat the article as on hold. There is no need to tag it as such, but give editors a reasonable deadline, and consider helping out with the repair work. Bear in mind that more flexibility may be required than for a normal hold—the editors did not request or expect your reassessment and will probably have other projects taking up their time. They may not have worked on the article for months or even years, and at worst the article may have been abandoned and its authors no longer active. As always, communication is the key. It sometimes helps to post messages to relevant WikiProjects (found at the top of the article talk page), or to contact editors directly (this tool is useful for identifying active editors for any given article).

Only once the above process has run its course, and sufficient improvement has not been forthcoming, is it time to think about delisting the article. Communicate your final decision on the article talk page, even if there was no response to your reassessment and hold, and take the time to fill in the various edit summaries on the article talk and GA list pages to ensure the delisting is transparent and trackable. If you have any doubts about your final decision, you can list the article at Good article reassessment or contact one of the GA mentors, who will be happy to advise.

Article reassessment is perhaps the single most controversial function of our WikiProject, and the one with the most potential to upset and alienate editors. Yet it is one of the most necessary too, since without the ability to revoke an article’s status we would be unable to maintain quality within the project. However, if we approach reassessment sensitively and with the goal of improving articles to the point where sanctions are unnecessary, we will ensure that delisting is the last resort, not the first.

• Delisting instructions

From the Editors

As we near the 4,000 Good Articles milestone, the project continues to grow and to gain respect in the Wikipedia community. Nevertheless, we continue to have a large backlog. If every member of WikiProject Good Articles would review just one article each day during the month of April, the backlog would be eliminated!

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
• OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent)
• EyeSerene (Article)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

Project News

• There are currently 4,050 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 195 unreviewed articles. Out of 227 total nominations, 16 are on hold, 14 are under review, and two are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Fighting Tommy Riley, Brock Lesnar, Cluj-Napoca, Wolf's Rain, Brian Kendrick, and North and South (TV serial).

The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (45), Sports and recreation (34), Music (18), Transport (15), World history (14), Politics and government (13), and Places (12).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 17 articles up for re-review.

GAN Reviewer of the Month

Noble Story (talk · contribs) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for April, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Noble Story joined Wikipedia on May 16, 2007. He is a big fan of the Houston Rockets, and edits many related articles, as well as articles on basketball in general. Congratulations to Noble Story (talk · contribs) on being April's GAN Reviewer of the Month!

Other outstanding reviewers during the month of April include:

• Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs)
• Drewcifer3000 (talk · contribs)
• Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• GaryColemanFan (talk · contribs)
• Gary King (talk · contribs)
• Jbmurray (talk · contribs)
• Kaypoh (talk · contribs)
• Lpangelrob (talk · contribs)
• Mitchazenia (talk · contribs)
• Nikki311 (talk · contribs)
• Realist2 (talk · contribs)
• Redtigerxyz (talk · contribs)
• ThinkBlue (talk · contribs)

Member News

There are now 212 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 17 new members that joined during the month of April:

• Affinity likely (talk · contribs)
• Climie.ca (talk · contribs)
• Edmund Patrick (talk · contribs)
• Eustress (talk · contribs)
• IMatthew (talk · contribs)
• Kironide (talk · contribs)
• Makeshift Thackery (talk · contribs)
• Mm40 (talk · contribs)
• Nikki311 (talk · contribs)
• Noble Story (talk · contribs)
• Peanut4 (talk · contribs)
• Realist2 (talk · contribs)
• SorryGuy (talk · contribs)
• Sushant gupta (talk · contribs)
• ThinkBlue (talk · contribs)
• WBOSITG (talk · contribs)
• Will381796 (talk · contribs)

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

GA Topic

Do you know what a GA topic is? If you are not nodding your head, or don't know what I'm talking about, then you should pay attention to this article.

There are ten GA top-level topics (but you will spot the eleventh as this article goes along). These topics are: Arts, Language and literature, Philosophy and religion, Everyday life, Social sciences and society, Geography and places, History, Engineering and technology, Mathematics, and Natural sciences. Each of these topics are further narrowed down to more specific topics. For example, Arts can be narrowed down to Art and architecture, Music, and Theatre, film and drama. But let's not get into sub-topics in this article because of its depth.

Now you will probably ask, "I already knew this, so what is your point?" What I want to illustrate is that some people often forget a step when they promote an article to GA. After they have posted their review in the article talk page, added the article name to the corresponding topic in the good article page, increased the GA count by 1, and added the {{GA}} to article talk page, many reviewers tend to forget to add the topic parameter in {{GA}} or {{ArticleHistory}}. You can browse the topic parameter abbreviations at on this page as well as what each top-level GA topic means, because sometimes it can be chaotic and confusing to pick a topic. For example, should On the Origin of Species be placed under the Natural Science topic (because it's related to evolution), or under the Language and Literature topic (because it is a book)? The correct answer is to place it under Language and literature topic, because its categorization as a proper title supercedes other categories.

Let's go back to the page that shows GA topics; does anyone spot the eleventh topic? Yes, Category:Good articles without topic parameter is the 11th topic, only it shouldn't be there. Articles that do not have a topic parameter in either {{GA}} or {{ArticleHistory}} will be placed in this category. The topic "Uncategorized" is not very informative, is it? So if you have time, you can consider cleaning up the articles that are left in this category and move them to the appropriate category by adding a topic parameter.

That's it for this month, I hope you learned a little from it.

GA Sweeps Update

The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of April, a total of 26 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 15 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and two were delisted. There are currently six articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions. One article was exempted from review because it was promoted to FA. Two articles were exempted from review because they were already delisted by another member in the community.

We are once again recruiting new sweeps participants. Candidates should be very strong and comfortable in reviewing GA and familiar with the GA processes and criteria. If you are interested, please contact OhanaUnited for details.

Did You Know...

• ...that there are slightly less than twice as many Good Articles as Featured Articles?
• ...that the total number of Good Articles and Featured Articles combined is 6,085?
• ...that different languages have different symbols representing GA? (Alemannic uses , Bavarian uses , Czech and French use , Estonian, Icelandic, and Swedish use , Esperanto and German use , Polish, Spanish, and Turkish use , Portuguese uses , Russian uses , Ukrainian uses )
  

Note: Lithuanian and Serbian have their own symbol but only uploaded locally. Other languages not listed above either have the same symbol as english or they don't have GA process.

From the Editors

There is currently a debate on adding a small green dot to the top right corner of all Good Articles that pass the criteria, similar to the small bronze star that is added to the top right corner of Featured Articles. Members of WikiProject Good Articles are encouraged to participate in the debate on this page.

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
• OhanaUnited (Article, GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

Project News

• There are currently 4,266 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 157 unreviewed articles. Out of 215 total nominations, 44 are on hold, 13 are under review, and one is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Choctaw, One Night Stand (2007), Justin Tuck, Tristan Tzara, The Stake Out (Seinfeld episode), Impalement arts, Backlash (2007), Adelaide Rams, and Sam Cowan.

The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (31), Sports and recreation (31), Transport (24), Music (13), and Art and architecture (11)

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 4 articles up for re-review.

GA Sweeps Update

The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of May, a total of 82 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 71 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and 11 were delisted. There are currently 15 articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions.

We are once again recruiting new sweeps participants. Candidates should be very strong and comfortable in reviewing GA and familiar with the GA processes and criteria. If you are interested, please contact OhanaUnited for details.

GAN Reviewer of the Month

Giggy (talk · contribs) (a.k.a. Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs)) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for May, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Giggy had a whopping 45 reviews during the month of May! Congratulations to Giggy (talk · contribs) on being May's GAN Reviewer of the Month!

Other outstanding reviewers during the month of May include:

• Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• Eustress (talk · contribs)
• GaryColemanFan (talk · contribs)
• Ice Cold Beer (talk · contribs)
• Juliancolton (talk · contribs)
• Nikki311 (talk · contribs)
• ThinkBlue (talk · contribs)
• Yllosubmarine (talk · contribs)

Also, with 19 nominations, Mitchazenia (talk · contribs) is the nominator of the month, followed by TonyTheTiger (talk · contribs) with 8 nominations submitted.

Member News

There are now 216 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 6 new members that joined during the month of April:

• Jack Bethune (talk · contribs)
• Jordan Timothy James Busson (talk · contribs)
• Limetolime (talk · contribs)
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Fan (talk · contribs)
• Mm40 (talk · contribs)
• Redmarkviolinist (talk · contribs)

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

New GA Review Process - Review Subpages

In case you haven't noticed, we initiated a new process for GA Reviews at the end of last month. The {{GA nominee}} template was modified to direct new reviews initiated on an article to begin on a subpage of article talkspace (e.g. [[Talk:Article/GA#]], where '#' is the current number of GA reviews conducted for the article, incremented automatically, starting with 1). The primary reason for this change is to address some concerns made by several Wikipedians that previous GA reviews are not easily accessible in archives, the way that featured article reviews and peer reviews are, since the review is conducted on the article's talkspace, instead of in a subpage of the featured article space or peer review space. The reason we opted to move GA reviews to article talkspace (instead of GA space) is to better maintain the personal relationship between editor(s) and reviewer(s) by keeping reviews done in an area where editors can easily access it. Nonetheless, we still desired to have better archiving and maintenance of past reviews, so that GA ultimately becomes more accountable.

When an article is nominated, the nominator adds the template using a substitution, by adding {{subst:GAN|subtopic=<name of subtopic for article at GAN>}}, as well as lists the article (as usual) at WP:GAN in the appropriate category.

When a reviewer initiates a review of an article, all that needs to be done is to read the template on the article's {{GA nominee}} template on its talk page, and click on the link to start the review. When the reviewer clicks on that link, they will also see some instructions on how to start a review of a GAN. For new reviewers, there's also a link to the Good Article criteria, as well as to the Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles page and the mentors list. Once an article is reviewed, the GA review page should be transcluded onto the main article talk page, by adding {{Talk:Article/GA#}} to the bottom of the talk page. This is to ensure maintain the transparency of the GA process, as well as to make editors of the article in question aware that the review is taking place. When an article is either passed or failed, there's really nothing different to do in the process, although reviewers are encouraged to utilize the {{ArticleHistory}} template, linking to the GA review subpage with the 'action#link' parameter.

Did You Know...

• ... that there are slightly more than twice as many Good Articles (4,266) as there are Featured Articles?
• ... that Giggy has some really neat and useful tools to assist reviewers in conducting their reviews?
• ... that there are ten experienced reviewers listed on the GA mentors list that can offer assistance or a second opinion in reviewing articles?

From the Editors

A GA working party has initiated discussion on ways to improve the Good Article project and processes. The goal of the working party is to come up with suggestions for improvement based on recent issues and concerns raised in the past, primarily in the wake of the Great Green Dot Debate of May 2008. The discussion can be found here. Members of the working party include: Dank55 (talk · contribs), Derek.cashman (talk · contribs), EyeSerene (talk · contribs), Giggy (talk · contribs), Gwinva (talk · contribs), LaraLove (talk · contribs), Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs), and OhanaUnited (talk · contribs).

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor)
• Giggabot, Giggy (Distributor)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

The LGBT studies WikiProject Newsletter! Issue XVI: July 23, 2008

Hello, members and friends of WP:LGBT! Updates about our latest happenings in the gayest corner of Wikipedia.

Project News

Homosexuality at Good Article Review!

An unfortunate effect of a group less active than in the past is that our articles lose integrity. This one is at Good Article Review for that reason. The talk page is quite active as a result. You have the opportunity to help. This is the corest of our core articles, and it needs some attention because it gets a lot of controversial input from many sides. If you can spare any time to edit the article, please do what you can.

Paragraph 175 is at Featured Article Review!

Soon after we were informed that Homosexuality is being scrutinized, we heard the same for one of our few Featured Articles. As a participant of the Featured Article process, I think this is actually a good thing. The standards for Featured Articles are getting higher with time. But as a member of this project, that means that a few of ours may be de-listed unless someone can swoop in and save them. This one has to do with the designation of homosexuality as a crime in Germany. Most of this article's sources are in German. If anyone has any particular skill in this area, please lend a hand!

Gay bathhouse is at Good Article Review! Wtf is going on?

I know you folks think I have much experience in a gay bathhouse, and I hate to disappoint you, but I actually do not. I seem like the sort of person who likes to stroll about in a towel. Shocking, no? It appears that Ashleyvh is single-handedly addressing all the problems with this article at its GA Review. While that's pretty impressive, it's also no doubt exhausting. Can anyone help out there?

Two GAs and a nominee!

In what I hope will counter the jolt of re-evaluating three Good or Featured Articles, José Sarria and Janet Jackson as gay icon passed as Good Articles, and Black Cat Bar (famous San Francisco oft-raided gay bar) is nominated, all by Otto4711. Rock on, man. You're a machine. Good luck with your nominations. What is it about women that make them gay icons? And are there lesbian icons that aren't lesbians? How about bisexual icons? Am I the only lesbian who reacts with soul-trembling fear at the sight of Angelina Jolie?

LGBT articles for deletion

New WP:LGBT studies member Pinkkeith has done this cool thing. If you click on that link, you'll see all the articles, categories, templates, and miscellany up for deletion. They're usually there because they're not considered to be not notable. That can be a relative concept, and sometimes it has to be argued that topics pertaining to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues are notable.

Completely naked women!

Ha! Made you look! Even the guys are looking. Gay pioneers Kay Lahusen's and Barbara Gittings' collection of photographs are up at the New York Public Library. Want to see images of the first Pride march in 1970 in New York City? How about Sylvia Rivera, drag queen extraordinaire, and Stonewall Riots participant? Or the contact sheet for The Ladder that showed full-face lesbians in print for the first time in US history? Ok I did mention naked women, and it's true. I found naked pictures of Barbara Gittings. But I scrolled through all of them and you'll have to as well. I'm not that mean, though. Here she is in the shower. How cute is she?

Tagging articles

It seems a recurring issue which articles to tag, and what to say about a topic that's tagged. Certainly, because an article falls under our scope doesn't necessarily make the person gay. Florida Governor Charlie Crist has been rumored to be gay in some newspaper accounts. Although we all know Fred Phelps is supergay, he won't admit it so instead he does the absolutely awfulest anti-gay things on the planet to deflect suspicion. NAMBLA, the red headed stepchild of the LGBT world, is tagged with an explanation we have yet to decide if we'll keep.

Member Spotlight: Benjiboi

In the lurking I do around and about on Wiki, I've long been astounded at the forbearance Benjiboi has for the utterly insane. Perhaps not so much, since the message on Benji's talk page notes frequent absences due to homophobia and transphobia. But it takes some kind of ... something that I don't have to face the constant anti-gay POV Benji does.

Benjiboi is a a bit of a WikiFaerie, a WikiGnome and also a member of the Article Rescue Squadron in addition to being a LGBT project member. A few of Benjiboi's favorite links for making the wikiverse more fab are:

1. Manual of style, a must for anyone redecorating an article.
2. Reliable sources in content review processes, a wonderful and fully linked essay about sourcing and why we need more and better sources.
3. Google scholar, which also searches Google books, is a great help in finding reliable sources.

Member Spotlight: Becksguy

Becksguy didn’t start actively editing until May 2007. His most frequent tasks on Wiki include reverting vandalism to LGBT articles and creating new project-related articles. He comes from New York state, and to prove not all of us are teenagers (ha! I am so totally 15!) he's in his 60s and retired.

Becksguy considers his biggest triumph on Wikipedia so far was a DYK in December 2007 for the first-ever newspaper report on what became AIDS, in the New York Native. He's also helped save several project-related articles from deletion. His lowest moment here was getting involved in the discussion on a particular terrorism related article, thinking he could help calm the roiled waters on an extremely contentious subject with multiple edit wars and passionate editors.

Here at WP:LGBT, he creates and improves articles that present notable LGBT related subjects in a fair and balanced way, and tries to include more of the significant alternative sexuality related subjects without being an activist, and works to better source project-related articles.

On Wikipedia as a whole, he says, "I think we need to learn better what processes work for a massive collaborative project. Some of what worked well for a more informal small project doesn’t scale up well. Process is not as important when the participants know each other. We need to get more of the current members to be more active. If more members were energized, the project would be able to accomplish more. We should be, in effect, the smaller and included Wikipedia for LGBT related subjects. Overall, I wish we could focus more on content creation and improvement, and less on vandal fighting."

Fresh faces to brighten our pages

Welcome to all of our new members!: Balin42632003, supposedlydisposable, Axiomdragon, antcjone, Jamesgregg76, Taulapapa, Mushii, Pinkkeith, Gr8lyknow, EricV89, Varnent, Ged_UK, Richie wright1980, Auriel If you have a question about anything, drop your question on our talk page. We'll do our best to answer.

"A Supreme Court decision in 1958 reversed a 1956 ruling by a federal district court that U.S. postal authorities were correct in prohibiting the mailing of the Mattachine Society's ONE magazine. The lower court had ruled that ONE was not protected by the First Amendment because the magazine's contents 'may be vulgar, offensive, and indecent even though not regarded as such by a particular group ... because their own social or moral standards are far below those of the general community ... Social standards are fixed by and for the great majority and not by and for a hardened or weakened minority.'" - Michael Bronski in Pulp Friction, 2003

Thanks for being weak and having lowered standards with me. --Moni3 (talk) 00:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please let us know here.
If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let Moni3 know.

Project News

• There are currently 4,675 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 141 unreviewed articles. Out of 186 total nominations, 28 are on hold, 14 are under review, and 3 are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Juggernaut (wrestler), Dark Angel (wrestler), Irrigation in Peru, Tropical cyclone rainfall forecasting, Coltrane for Lovers, Bayshore Freeway, Jon Cryer, Heather Mills, New York State Route 273, and Tsugaru clan.

The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film, and drama (28 articles), Sports and recreation (27 articles), Music (22 articles), Transport (18 articles), and War and military (13 articles).

There are currently 4 articles up for re-review at Good Article Reassessment. Congratulations! There really is no "backlog" here! :-)

GA Sweeps is Recruiting Reviewers

We are once again recruiting new sweeps participants. Candidates should be very strong and comfortable in reviewing GA and familiar with the GA processes and criteria. If you are interested, please contact OhanaUnited for details.

GAN Reviewer of the Month

ThinkBlue (talk · contribs) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for July, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. ThinkBlue had a whopping 49 reviews during the month of July! ThinkBlue was also one of our two reviewers of the month from June, and has been editing Wikipedia since December 1, 2006, and is interested in articles dealing with Friends, Will and Grace, CSI:Miami, Monday Night Raw, Coldplay.

Congratulations to Giggy (talk · contribs) on being May's GAN Reviewer of the Month!

Other outstanding reviewers during the month of July include:

• Gary King (talk · contribs)
• Giggy (talk · contribs)
• Lpangelrob (talk · contribs)
• Nikki311 (talk · contribs)
• Peanut4 (talk · contribs)

Also, with 17 nominations, Mr.crabby (talk · contribs) is the nominator of the month.

Member News

There are now 223 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 7 new members that joined during the month of July:

• 97198 (talk · contribs)
• Carbonrodney (talk · contribs)
• Gary King (talk · contribs)
• Omaga99 (talk · contribs)
• Protonk (talk · contribs)
• RSkyhawk (talk · contribs)
• Samuel Tan (talk · contribs)

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

GA Sweeps Process

The GA Sweeps process has recently reached its first year anniversary. If you are unaware of what GA Sweeps is, it is a process put in place to help ensure the integrity of the ever-growing number of GAs, by determining if the articles still meet the GA criteria. Experienced reviewers check each article, improving articles as they review them, and delisting those that no longer meet the criteria. Reviewers work on a specific category of GAs, and there are still many categories that need to be swept. In order to properly keep track of reviews, a set date was used to determine what articles needed to be reviewed (since any future GAs would be passed according to the most recent GA criteria).

The number of GAs that were to be reviewed totals 2,808. Since the beginning of Sweeps, the progress has reviewed 981 by the end of July 2008 (or exempted them). For a table and chart breakdown of the current progress, see here.

With more than twenty editors reviewing the articles, progress is currently a third of the way done. At this rate, it will take another two years to complete the Sweeps, and active involvement is imperative to completing on time. We are always looking for new reviewers, and if you are interested in helping in speeding up the Sweeps process and improving your reviewing skills, please contact OhanaUnited.

Did You Know...

• ... that the goal of GA Sweeps is to reviewed all articles listed before 26 August 2007?
• ... that the entire category of, "Meteorology and atmospheric sciences" has been swept?
• ... that of all subcategories, "Recordings, compositions and performances" in the Music category has the most articles (240 articles in total)?
• ... that the GA project was recently mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article entitled, "Wikipedians Leave Cyberspace, Meet in Egypt," on Wikipedia on August 8, 2008?

From the Editor

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

Contributors to this Issue

• Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
• OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps Correspondent)
• Nehrams2020 (Article Correspondent)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

The LGBT studies WikiProject Newsletter! Issue XVII: November 12, 2008

Wake up WP:LGBT! It's time to kick in gear and get some things done!

Project News

Wake up!

I say this to myself as much as I say it to all of us. I work a lot by myself or with individual editors who spend time at Featured Article Candidates. It seems on November 5 a fog was lifted off my brain that helped me realize that we have massive potential in this project to get things done. Take this allegory, for instance: On Wednesday, Nov. 5, 1980, my 10th-grade American history teacher started class by unfurling The New York Times. She pointed to its triple banner headline: “Reagan Easily Beats Carter; Republicans Gain in Congress; D’Amato and Dodd are Victors.” “Save this paper,” she told us. “This is the start of a whole new era.” Judith Warner from The New York Times

It definitely seems a start to a whole new era now. If planets align correctly to remind us that whatever advances we may have made in electing what appears to be an extraordinary president in the US, the moons that revolve around those planets also serve to illustrate it's not that simple. Florida, Arizona, and California all appear to have banned same sex marriage. As someone who was married in California and lives in Florida, this is particularly poignant. We seem to be at the juncture of two converging paths. If we maximize our efforts and take the right ones, we might just be able to affect some change for ourselves.

The power of Wikipedia and California Proposition 8 (2008)

Though what we do is an interesting hobby for some, we have the power to make a difference. California's ballot initiative to ban gay marriage was a fierce fight. It's being challenged right now, but just look at how Wikipedia played a role in that: in October 2008, 360,238 people read its article. On November 5, an astounding 467,000 people read it. I commend the editors who work on that article—both those who support and oppose it. A look at the talk page shows a concerted effort to keep it civil and accurate.

What can we do?

How do you fight ignorance? With information. That's what Wikipedia is for. This project is overwhelming with 8,576 articles in its scope. We can continue to work piecemeal as we have in the past, or we can focus on goals. These are examples of areas we can concentrate on.

There are more than 8,000 articles to work on. Can we build a list of priorities? Can we build enough enthusiasm to work on these? What if we had editors who oversaw progress in these areas and reported to the talk page or in the newsletter? Surely someone here wants to report on the progress of sex articles.

Tony Perkins (irony) from the conservative Family Research Council was heartened by the recent passages of gay marriage bans. The Republican Party is without direction. What's going to take the place of a moderate voice will not be pleasant to our ears. Watching and improving articles of subjects that have opposed gay rights in the past will be of vital importance very soon, I predict.

But WP:LGBT is not a very active project

All we can do is start somewhere. The first step is answering this newsletter on the project talk page. Join in the discussion.

More things we can do

• Give out more barnstars, and let each other know that what they're doing is valued.
• Create a guide to stave off burnout, because editors in this project get burned out faster than others. There are many hills to climb.
• Bring back the monthly collaboration project.
• Participate in LGBT Peer reviews.
• Get familiar with the characteristics of Good Articles and get our top priority articles to WP:GA.
• Keep our project page and open tasks template updated.
• Use the Newsletter, Moni3! You can suggest what to send out in the newsletter, too!
• Offer research materials, copy editing, ideas, and support to your fellow editors.
• Keep the project talk page informed of problems and discussions we should know about.

Proposal: Put Importance Levels on articles

If this was decided long before I was a member, maybe it's time to revisit it. Other WikiProjects, such as WP:Novels determine that some subjects have an importance category: Top, High, Mid, Low, or None (undetermined). If we decide that our most core articles, it might help to organize which articles to address first. Top importance, for example, would be Gay, Homosexual, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Sappho, Oscar Wilde, Stonewall riots, for example. High importance would be Homosexuality and psychology, Harvey Milk, Mattachine Society, Harry Hay, or Daughters of Bilitis, and so on. This can be a matter of discussion, or perhaps we could have someone in charge of determining these levels for all the articles we have tagged.

So, like Slim Whitman, "I'm Calling You"

The editors I have admired in the past, who have done great things alone, and who I think can help us all do extraordinary things now: SatyrTN, Dev920, Aleta, Becksguy, Otto4711, BelovedFreak, Benjiboi, Bookkeeper of the Occult, Queerudite, FisherQueen (I will marry you), PaulB, APK, ZigZig20s, AllStarEcho (I know you're out there), Raystorm, and my very own copy editor, Dank55.

These are the editors I've seen working (and I know I'm forgetting a few). There's more of you out there I haven't seen. Some of you are new. We need all of you. Please help.

Miami, January 18, 1977 after the gay rights ordinance was passed: While Bryant and the others were creating the beginnings of the repeal effort, (gay activists) Basker, Campbell, Kunst, and the other (gay rights) ordinance supporters congratulated themselves on their success and then quickly disbanded... There was no organized recognition or celebration of the victory. As one activist remembered, "We just went home." They had little idea of the battle that was before them. - Fred Fejes in Gay Rights and Moral Panic, 2008

Don't go home yet, please. --Moni3 (talk) 00:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let Moni3 know.

The LGBT studies WikiProject Newsletter! Issue XVIII: June 24, 2009

Yo, happy Pride y'all - are you ready for your close-up?

Stonewall riots

How do you change the world? You can start by writing an incredible article for the world's encyclopedia. Moni3 kicks it old school again with Stonewall riots - a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn. [...] [T]hey have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. It's a featured article hitting the mainpage this Sunday to mark the 40th anniversary of the events. So first off, wow! Clever and cool. Moni3 has been recently named hottest delegate to Obama's bookclub but that may not be official yet. (Shhh!)

Otto4711 mentioned that gee we really should swamp the DYK section with LGBT-related articles for use on the 28th as well. We have eight or so in the holding area and if you push yourself to get an article together you might be able to get in on the fun. Do this now!

The official rules for DYKs can be found here. Once you have expanded an article 5-fold or created an article with at least 1,500 characters of prose, place your DYK thread here. Use this handy tool to count your 1,500 characters. As a suggestion, when you add your potential hook, include the character count and a link to the source(s) that confirm the hook. These will be confirmed anyway but may help.

Trans quotes needed for Portal:Transgender

The layout for the individual quotes is here (just copy/paste into one of the red links on Portal:Transgender/Random quote). Then this counter has to be upped to match the new # of total quotes (not counting quote zero).

Obama proclamation

On June 1, President Barack Obama declared June 2009 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, citing the riots as a reason to "commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans". Excerpts at the bottom.

F*ck me I'm famous

I was interviewed by Wikipedia Signpost, the weekly in-house newsletter, for the WikiProject report. The Signpost has nearly 1,000 Wikipedian subscribers and arguably many of those folks actually read it. It came about rather quickly and my worst fears - that it was an elaborate hoax by a troll - were apparently unfounded. I hope y'all feel I did fine by the project, I did my best to avoid the phrase "man-humping, cock-sucking, doggy-style loving queer" but otherwise did ok.

Free image appeal

A friendly reminder to consider taking photos while you're out and about at various Dyke marches and Pride parades. Consider donating them to the world at Wikicommons. I'm sooo totally over having to deal with lovely images being deleted and argued about. If they are just free they are then also freely usable worldwide. And no, they don't need photos of your cha-cha or hoo-hoo-dilly.

Chaz Bono

Sonny and Cher's daughter was a famous lesbian and now he's a famous transman, possibly the most famous in the world. This also serves as a friendly reminder that we recently updated Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies/Guidelines - it's not perfect but should help inform on those gnip-gnop battles that do seem to drag on, and not in the good way.

R U Popular?

Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies/Popular pages is a new handy place to see which LGBT-tagged pages are the most popular in any given month.

Article alerts

As part of the redecorating at our talkpage, the article alerts and keyword search alerts are handily located at the top of the page. Always fascinating to see what's up. All help appreciated on those.

Glambert

Adam Lambert is soooo gay - surprised? Neither is anyone else. Nuff said. David Ogden Stiers was outed but apparently he wasn't terribly in either.

Community Quilt reminder

Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies/Quilt - update it and add yourself!

Our own little IRC home

The LGBT studies project does have its own free Internet Relay Chat channel, #wikipedia-en-lgbt ^connect, for coordination, collaboration and socializing. This channel is hosted on Freenode and can be accessed in one of two ways: If you already have an IRC client, click the link to the left. If you do not have an IRC client, you'll need to get one installed on your computer first. Once you've done this, then click on the link to the left.

For more general information on IRC and a listing of other useful Wikipedia-related channels, see Wikipedia:IRC channels.

The project had at one point another channel at #LGBTproject ^connect but as the original people associated with the setting up and administration of that channel have seemed to have disappeared, this new channel has been set up. Plus the new channel is inline with required naming conventions for Wikipedia related IRC channels. So, feel free to use this channel. Such a channel gives opportunity to discuss the latest happening on articles, the LGBT project itself, latest happening in your life with "wiki-friends" here, etc.. You can say things on there you normally wouldn't here on Wikipedia (keeping it civil of course) like talk about the latest hot guy/girl or tell a joke.. you get the point. Anyway, see you there - eventually!

LGBT to-do list (held over from last edition)

• Give out more barnstars, and let each other know that what they're doing is valued.
• Create a guide to stave off burnout, because editors in this project get burned out faster than others. There are many hills to climb.
• Bring back the monthly collaboration project.
• Participate in LGBT Peer reviews.
• Get familiar with the characteristics of Good Articles and get our top priority articles to WP:GA.
• Keep our project page and open tasks template updated.
• Use the Newsletter, Moni3! You can suggest what to send out in the newsletter, too!
• Offer research materials, copy editing, ideas, and support to your fellow editors.
• Keep the project talk page informed of problems and discussions we should know about.

Click your heels three times ladies and gents, home is where hot is! -- Banjeboi

To receive this newsletter in a different format, please let us know here.
If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let Moni3 know.

Project News^[1]

• There are currently 15,862 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

• The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 345 unreviewed articles. Out of 439 total nominations, 24 are on hold, 66 are under review, and 4 are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article! Even just reviewing one will help!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: General sejm, Prime Minister of Vietnam, Tanisha Thomas, Kosta Pećanac, and Jilly Kitzinger.

The categories with the largest backlogs are: Social sciences and society (80 articles), Sports and recreation (70 articles), Music (63 articles), Theatre, film and drama (52 articles), and History (41 articles). Please consider reviewing articles within these sections.

There are currently 13 articles up for reassessment at Good Article Reassessment. Please help out and go to WP:GAR and review an article! Remember that anyone can review articles that are listed under "Community Reassessment" even if another user has already listed their opinion...the more opinions, the better!

Member News

• There are currently 222 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to all the new members that joined during the past 17 months! If you aren't yet part of WikiProject Good Articles and interested in joining WikiProject Good Articles, go here and add you name. Everyone is welcomed!

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

• If you haven't done so already, please remember to add your name to this list if you are still interested/active with this WikiProject. If you are no longer interested/active you don't need to add your name anywhere, you're name will be moved into a "inactive participant" list at the beginning of November. Inactive users will not receive future newsletters from this WikiProject via their talk page.

GA Task forces

• There is currently not much going on at this time but there is a very large backlog. Until the next backlog elimination drive, please help reduce the number of nominations by reviewing articles and helping other reviewers that may need second opinions.

• Thanks to everyone who committed some time to help reduce the nominations backlog during the June-July 2012 backlog elimination drive. Most barnstars have been given out but there are still a few left. Participants that haven't gotten a barnstar yet should get it soon.

Possible Fall/Winter 2012 Backlog Elimination Drive

• A discussion is currently being held on the WikiProject's talk page on weather another eliminations drive should take place within the next few months as the last one proved to be extremely successful. Please take the time to go to the the talk page and include your opinion on if you would be interested in taking part in a Fall/Winter 2012 elimination drive.

Good Articles of the Month

Each month, 5 random good articles will be choose to be featured here as the good articles of the month.

• Barry (dog)
• I Love Bees
• Miles Copeland (Home and Away)
• London Country North East
• The Daily Show

Some Tips About References/Sources

Having references included in articles is one of the most important aspects to a good article, let alone Wikipedia! Without them, no one would ever know what is true and what is false and Wikipedia probably wouldn't be where it is today. So this month, I will talk about how to check for references, how reliable they are, and so on and so forth.

The first thing to do when reviewing an nominee is to do a quick scan of the article. One of the things to look for is if the article has references! If you don't see a list at the bottom of the article page, quick-fail it.^[2] For newcomers, quick-failing is failing an article when you spot a problem before actually conducting a full review. If you do find a list of references (and in most cases you will) make sure to look through each and every one. If you want to save some time, use this tool as it will tell you if there are any problematic references in the article you are reviewing.

Next, check the reliability and type of the references/sources. In terms of the type of reference, check to see how many primary and/or secondary sources are included. Primary sources are the ones published by the subject of the article. For example, if the subject of the article has to do with the iPhone 4s and the source is published by Apple, it is considered a primary source. Secondary sources are those not published by the subject of the article (or in close relation to it). Newspapers are examples of secondary sources and considered one of the better types to include in the article (not saying primary sources are bad). If you find that most/all of the references are primary sources, notify the nominator about this issue(s) and place the article on hold once you have completed the review. Only in the event that a secondary source can't be found as a replacement, then the primary source can remain. If there is a good mix of primary and secondary sources, that is perfect and no references need to be changed.

Now, reliability. Forums are generally not considered reliable and some blog's may not be reliable either. Newspapers, most sources published by the subject, some blogs, etc. are considered reliable. If you don't know wether the source is reliable, ask for a second opinion. For more info about how to identify wether a reference is reliable or not, visit this article.

Finally, one of the more basic things to look for is that every statement in the article has at least one reference! The only case that a statement doesn't need a reference is when it is common sense that the statement is defiantly true and/or in the case where the statement can't be challenged, as per what Wikipedia says, "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation."

From the Editor

After a long 18 month hiatus, the third volume of the WikiProject Good Articles newsletter is here! Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue of the newsletter here or on the editors talk page.

Also, Happy Halloween...in advance!!!

PLEASE READ: If you do not wish to receive future WikiProject Good Articles newsletter's on your talk page, please remove your self from this list. If you are viewing this newsletter from the WikiProject Good Articles page or on someone else's talk page and want to receive future newsletters on your talk page, please add your name to the list linked above.

Contributors to this Issue

• Dom497 (Editor of this Issue)

Did You Know...

• ... that 2,100 articles have been reviewed during all backlog elimination drives combined?
• ... that out of 4,055,039 articles on Wikipedia, only 15,846 are good articles?

  

• ... that there are currently over 400 video game good articles?

Notes

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!