This request for comment is closed. After 15 days of community vote, we have reached consensus on several things related to drives, and others may need further discussion at WT:GAN. The Big Question: Do we want drives?, was answered and, with 76% of approval, the answer is yes. Now, several proposals were made. The approved ones were:
Proposal 3: Disqualifying process: Each user with more than 5 removed reviews may be disqualified from the drive.
Proposal 4 - Part 2: Drive duration: Drives will last for one month.
Proposal 5: Drive scope: Drives will only be aimed to review the oldest nominations. Older nominations are those with more than one-to-two months on the queue. Nominations with less than a month should be excluded from the drive until all older nominations are reviewed.
Proposal 6 - Part 1: Drive and barnstars, Part 1: Barnstars will now be given for users who reviewed 5, 10 and 25 nominations. There will be neither leaderboard or a number-one position race, and disruptive competition for holding the highest number of reviews is discouraged.
Proposal 6 - Part 1 got 67% of support, which is below of the 70% threshold. Although, several of the opposes expressed support to the proposal, and though it is considered as approved. This, as well as other proposals will be revisited at WT:GAN starting November 16, 2012.
Proposal 6 - Part 3: Drive and barnstars, Part 3: Each user may submit up to two reviews for consideration to receive a special barnstar which will be awarded to the best three reviews of the drive. A vote may be held with coordinators, drive reviewers and participants voting for their favourite review in order to select the three reviewers who will receive the award [each reviewer may receive only one award].
This proposal will be further discussed before being implemented at drives, mainly because of its complexity. Although, as this is not being used until the drive's end, there is plenty of time to discuss how it may work. This will be held at WT:GAN.
Several other proposals were not approved by community. Several review limits and restrictions were proposed to see how community visualized them and they were strongly rejected. This leads to a very interesting conclusion: Reviewers, and users in general, are not interested in adding bureucracy and excessive limits to participate in drives, which is completely reasonable. Although, they expressed their satisfaction with the existence of better quality control measures, as well as disqualifying processess to avoid low-quality reviews and disruptive users.
An interesting proposal that will need discussion is the timing between drives. No consensus was reached whether a 1 month-3 month; 1 month-5 month rule will be used, and several users stated that drives may only be needed when necessary. Also, additional proposals were added, showcasing promising replacements for the drives, although further community input may be needed for that, in a future. Finally, I declare this RFC closed. Thanks to all users who participated. — ΛΧΣ21™05:04, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
GAN Backlog Elimination Drives are a process that has been held since the very foundation of the Good articles Wikiproject. The first drive was held between May and June of 2007 and, since then, the project has had a total nine backlog elimination drives; the most recent one was held between June and July of 2012. This last drive brought several bold questions between the GAN community about the productivity and efficiency of the backlog elimination drives when applied to the GAN process and, as a result, I decided to start this RFC to choose the future of the drives. This Request for comment begun on 1 November 2012 at 00:00 UTC and closed at 05:23, 15 November 2012 (UTC).
This RfC will run for a minimum of 10 days but no more than 15. Therefore closure should not be made before November 9, 2012 but, not run past November 15, 2012. The first set of questions merely discuss the situation of our current GAN Backlog Elimination Drives. The second set of questions are proposals listed by different users as methods to improving or changing the system. Each proposal will be considered as approved if it received at least 70% of support over the total number of votes.
Should the GAN Backlog Elimination Drives still be held? (This is a majority vote. Proposals with the most consensus for support will be picked below if majority vote is yes.)
In my experience, while backlog elimination drives do do some good, they also create huge variability in expectations of time-to-review. If you're planning your GA promotion efforts, you need to plan around backlog elimination drives if you're budgeting your time. Jclemens (talk) 20:12, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No. Somewhat agree with Jclemens, and the backlog is soon back up to pre-drive levels anyway.
My experience is that the backlog drives burns out editors and creates a "twice-a-year" experience for nominators which dries out the project. Arsenikk(talk)20:51, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Makes little overall difference to the backlog, burns out editors and encourages a lot of poor reviews. Does little to recruit good new reviewers. Jezhotwells (talk) 07:54, 9 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Shouldn't we be thinking more long-term than periodic drives? The more recent ones have done more harm than good, I think, and have required a lot of cleaning up afterwards. Sarastro1 (talk) 22:24, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Introduce a qualifying process: Each user willing to participate selects and article from the Good article nomination list, does the review, and submits it for consideration by the drive coordinators. If, after the submission is revised, coordinators agree that it is of enough quality, the user is allowed to participate.
Homunculus (duihua) 04:13, 2 November 2012 (UTC). But tweak to the wording in the proposal: each new reviewer who wishes to participate should do this. Editors who meet the criteria for the proposal below (10+ past reviews) should be exempted from this requirement.[reply]
I don't think this would prevent "rubber stamping". Users might make their first review high quality in order to pass the test and then go on to make poor quality reviews. --Tea with toast(話)01:14, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Homunculus (duihua) 04:09, 2 November 2012 (UTC) This one I can't support. I've yet to complete a review on my own, but I have written a handful of GAs, with more pending. There are more ways than one to demonstrate a grasp of the GA criteria, and people like me shouldn't be excluded from participation in a backlog elimination drive.[reply]
BlueMoonset (talk) 23:20, 3 November 2012 (UTC) Too many people, myself included, who are competent reviewers wouldn't qualify due to this arbitrary number. As long as someone can show they have done suitable reviews (either previously or by taking on a new one), they should be eligible.[reply]
Review limits: Each participant is bound to a limit of 5 reviews per day (between new and opened reviews). This means that any user cannot have more than 5 opened reviews at the same time. If a user violates this rule, they may be disqualified from the drive. Note that this does not limit the maximum number of reviews that a user can do per day, but the number of opened reviews.Reworded proposal below
Review limits: Each participant is bound to a limit of 5 reviews per day and they cannot have more than 5 opened reviews at the same time (between new and open reviews from the previous day). If a user violates this rule, they may be disqualified from the drive.
Seems a reasonable way to encourage quality by forcing reviewers to limit their focus. The limit isn't inappropriately low, either. Would need to come with consequences, though. --Batard0 (talk) 16:38, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
BlueMoonset (talk) 23:33, 3 November 2012 (UTC) As worded, this does not make sense. First it says each participant "is bound to a limit of 5 reviews per day (between new and opened reviews)", and then it redefines what it just says "any user cannot have more than 5 opened reviews at the same time" which is not at all the same thing, and finally says "this does not limit the maximum number of reviews that a user can do per day, but the number of opened reviews". If the rule means that a person can't start more than five reviews in a day, it needs to make that clear. If it means that the person cannot have more than five reviews in progress (aka "opened") at any one time, it needs to make that clear. And if it's trying to combine the two: that no more than five may be opened in a day, with a limit of five at any one moment, that needs to be clear as well. I gather than once five are open, at least one must be closed (pass or fail) before a new one may be opened. If this can be adequately explained or reworded, I'll be happy to change my vote. Note: as I read this, a person who starts out with five already open at midnight could conceivably close as many as ten by the end of the day, but be limited to that because of the five new max per day limit. Is that really true?[reply]
If someone is doing good reviews then why hold them to this number. This could also encourage reviewers to close reviews prematurely so they can move on to the next one. Being productive does not always mean you are a bad reviewer. AIRcorn(talk)23:36, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The thrust of this seems to be to prevent reviewers from piling up crappy reviews to prevent them from disrupting the process for a bigger prize/barnstar. But it won't prevent those bad reviews, and it hampers those with the patience to do many good reviews in a short time frame unnecessarily. Resolute16:55, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Disqualifying process: Each user with more than 3 removed reviews may be disqualified from the drive. Disqualifying process: Each user with more than 5 removed reviews may be disqualified from the drive.
I don't see that this frequency will give a "wow" effect, it will probably just lead to reviews being carried out a third of the time leaving a broken review process two of three months. Arsenikk(talk)20:51, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That isn't what it said. Every three months means they start three months apart, just like every six months means they start six months apart and occur exactly twice a year. If you want to redefine it, that's your business, but you're using a non-standard meaning if you do. (Arsenikk read it the same way I did.) If you're changing it, then I'll note that starting one every four months also seems too frequent to me, so I'm still in the Oppose camp. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:12, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My preference would be to have them when they are needed. Otherwise, where is the incentive for semi-regular reviewers to bother in the intervening three months? Sarastro1 (talk) 22:24, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
With the qualification that I don't think a timespan is desirable; where is the incentive to review in between drives if one is coming up soon? Sarastro1 (talk) 22:24, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Drive scope: Drives will only be aimed to review the oldest nominations. Older nominations are those with more than one-to-two months on the queue. Nominations with less than a month should be excluded from the drive until all older nominations are reviewed.
The old reviews are the problem with the backlog, not the number waiting for review. Also feel this will reduce many of the problems that the other proposals here are addressing. AIRcorn(talk)01:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is important. I'd add the caveat, though, that this should apply only to the broad sections in GAN. In other words, reviews should count within, say, Sports & Recreation even if the oldest in that category is less than two months old but there are other articles in other categories that are older. This would acknowledge that some reviewers may not wish to review, say, science articles because they feel they don't have the expertise or interest. This is a nitpick, really. --Batard0 (talk) 16:48, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We can add the scope of this at each drive's beginning. I mean: before the drive starts, we select the sections that are planned to be worked first and then, after the goal is done, open all nominations for inclusion. Of course, if a user is not interested in reviewing any of those articles, he/she may [of course] be able to pick another review. — ṞṈ™00:23, 7 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support on this. Reviewing something that came in 15 minutes ago doesn't help the backlog at all. If anything it makes it worse since the numbers don't go down and those getting quick reviews come to expect them. Wizardman22:48, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The drives should be aimed at old noms, yes. But supporting this statement does not necessarily imply that nobody should be reviewing newer noms. Resolute16:50, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Reviewers should be allowed to review whatever they want, without being forced to review articles that don't like, or are not knowledge in, effecting the quality of reviews even more. For example, I would never review a "history" article, because I don't like the subject, I like television, and review those types of articles. TBrandley17:47, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose. This would stifle productivity and just lead to a furthering of the backlog for the next month. At the very least, just let the newer articles only count for 1/2 points. And only limit "new articles" to just those nominated in the past week or past 2 days. --Tea with toast(話)01:51, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Just in case you did not read well, this is not a restriction but a scope determination. This only means that we will aim drives to match an specific goal, not that we will put a restriction to which articles can be reviewed during the drive. — ΛΧΣ21™19:42, 9 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think such restrictions would be helpful. It's more of a chore if you are limited to older, potentially problematic articles. There is sometimes a reason why no-one has reviewed it. Sarastro1 (talk) 22:24, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Drive and barnstars, Part 1: Barnstars will now be given for users who reviewed 5, 10 and 25 nominations. There will be neither leaderboard or a number-one position race, and disruptive competition for holding the highest number of reviews is discouraged.
Can see the opposition viewpoint, but a 'kudos' goes a long way to making some reviewers feel good about the process, and therefore continuing. Resolute16:52, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Once, and only once, I gave all inn to get the 40 (I think) review barnstar. Otherwise these are more or less meaningless for those of us that have been around for a while. For new reviewers, perhaps it will result in people reviewing just one or more articles to reach a "magic number". Arsenikk(talk)20:51, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose per the above. I think it is good to drop out the award for "most reviews", but I think adding some higher barnstars (one for 40 or 50?) would be ok. --Tea with toast(話)01:55, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, how about replacing the "most articles" category with one similar to what WP:GOCE has for most articles with high (5k+) word count. Those are the articles that are most likely to sit for months without a review. Also, the word count would be starting word count so that bloated articles can be appropriately chopped down without affecting qualification. --Tea with toast(話)02:02, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we can discuss it at the talk page, or you can add it as an additional proposal below, I guess. Although, I didn't understand very well what are you proposing apart from the 5k articles. May you elaborate please? [preferably att he talk page]. — ΛΧΣ21™02:05, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Strange oppose. I actually endorse this, but want to make a counterproposal: that we give barnstars to those who do the most and best reviews, but we do not list articles beyond 25 or have any kind of leaderboard. After the drive is over, we determine who has the most or best among the people who surpassed 25 and award them accordingly. The fact that there will be additional barnstars isn't publicized heavily, but there's a statement saying something like, "Additional barnstars may be awarded at the organizers' discretion for superior performance in the drive." This gets rid of the competitive element while keeping people motivated; it also implies that extra awards won't be given to people who do reviews judged inferior. --Batard0 (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Drive and barnstars, Part 2: Barnstars may be discretionarily given [by coordinators or drive reviewers] to those users who reviewed many old nominations, as well as to those who did high quality reviews. To give these barnstars, a mini-vote may be held by coordinators and reviewers approving or dissaproving the award. [may be held means that such vote is not mandatory but optional.]
It is difficult to "review a review" (especially of well-written articles) and this proposals is difficult to predict the outcome of for participants. Arsenikk(talk)20:51, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
But who decides what a good review looks like? What qualifies the judges? What are the criteria? Are we now getting into reviewing reviews and having "good good article reviews"? Sarastro1 (talk) 22:24, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Drive and barnstars, Part 3: Each user may submit up to two reviews for consideration to receive a special barnstar which will be awarded to the best three reviews of the drive. A vote may be held with coordinators, drive reviewers and participants voting for their favourite review in order to select the three reviewers who will receive the award [each reviewer may receive only one award].
But who decides what a good review looks like? What qualifies the judges? What are the criteria? Are we now getting into reviewing reviews and having "good good article reviews"? Sarastro1 (talk) 22:24, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
People decides. It is aimed to award users who took their time to make a very comprehensive and dedicated review, and the article promoted is indeed of very high quality [just an example]. All participants of the drive, as well as coordinators are able to vote and choose the best review. I thought about this as a method to encourage good reviews. — ΛΧΣ21™18:07, 11 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
