Image/source check requests

A voluntary mentoring scheme, designed to help first-time FAC nominators through the process and to improve their chances of a successful outcome, is now in action. Click here for further details. Experienced FAC editors, with five or more "stars" behind them, are invited to consider adding their names to the list of possible mentors, also found in the link. Brianboulton (talk) 10:17, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

For advice on conducting source reviews, see Wikipedia:Guidance on source reviewing at FAC.

Template:Featured article candidates/editintro says that the FACses should not be split by headers. However, plenty of FACses have headers, some of them added by coordinators, and Template:FAC-instructions doesn't mention such a rule. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:53, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:FACSUPPORTOPPOSE clarifies the point: "a reviewer who enters lengthy commentary may create a neutral fourth-level subsection, named either ==== Review by EditorX ==== or ==== Comments by EditorX ==== (do not use third-level or higher section headers). Please do not create subsections for short statements of support or opposition". There's more details around when to use and not in that section, but it should not be an automatic starting point. Practice seems to have drifted from this text for some editors, while others stick to the old ways. - SchroCat (talk) 09:58, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I insert a level-4-header to avoid edit conflicts, and see no disadvantage for that practise. I have been tempted in lengthy reviews to also add level-5headers to ease dialogues but have not done so yet. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:17, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

JJE is quite correct, as is SC. Although I wouldn't say so much that 'practice seems to have drifted' rather than some editors have deliberately chosen to do it differently in spite of the instructions. ——Serial Number 54129 11:07, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Would anyone object if we removed that statement from the editintro and from FACSUPPORTOPPOSE? I don't know why it was added and can't think of a reason why anyone would object. SchroCat, you seem to think the rule is a good idea; what do you see as the benefit? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:01, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

What's the rationale for removing the FACSUPPORTOPPOSE version? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:38, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

No more than that it's harmless to create sections for short statements of support or opposition. It's not that it would be required, just that there would no longer be an instruction regarding it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 06:55, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

It also says Please do not use a semicolon to bold a subheading; this creates accessibility problems.. ——Serial Number 54129 12:01, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Agreed - even if we think subsections for a sentence are harmless, there's more to this wording than that. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:33, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#RfC: Change INFOBOXUSE to recommend the use of infoboxes that would affect numerous FAs. Input from all sides is welcomed. - SchroCat (talk) 04:43, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi all—The core contest returns! Leaving this here:

The Core Contest—Wikipedia's most exciting contest—returns again this year from April 15 to May 31. The goal: to improve vital or other core articles, with a focus on those in the worst state of disrepair. Editing can be done individually, but in the past groups have also successfully competed. There is £300 of prize money divided among editors who provide the "best additive encyclopedic value". Signups are open now. Cheers from the judges, Femke, Casliber, Aza24. – Aza24 (talk) 02:20, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

In my last nominations (Education and Knowledge), I was struggling with the comprehensiveness criterion (the article neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context). To prepare better for future nominations, I was hoping to learn how to best assess the comprehensiveness of articles on very wide topics for which it is not possible to consider every source mentioning the topic or include every single aspect, view, or example somehow related to it. This problem was also shared by several reviewers who did not vote because they did not feel confident about assessing comprehensiveness.

Based on high-quality reliable sources, how do you determine whether an article of this type is comprehensive? If an article does not cover a specific aspect, view, or example, how do you assess whether it requires a sentence, a paragraph, or a top-level section to cover that aspect, view, or example? Phlsph7 (talk) 08:09, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

For the broad articles I worked on like Armenian genocide, the article's coverage was weighted largely based on coverage in sources that provided an overview of the topic (like the books cited whose stated topic is "Armenian genocide"). All of the main topics were in their own subsection and often summary style for other Wikipedia articles. Details were filled in based on the criteria of how much it is covered in the sources and my intuition about "does the reader need to know this to understand the topic", which helped both ensure comprehensiveness and control length. Without any overview sources it would be a lot harder to determine the appropriate article structure and which information to include. However, I think any article that is at a reasonable length and has the topics correctly weighted can be considered comprehensive. (t · c) buidhe 08:32, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I'd say a lot depends on how many sources exist on a topic. My volcano articles often have only a few sources (even if "a few" numbers in the thousands) so including everything that isn't utterly trivial or unreliably sourced or contested is how I work. For your topics, naturally we can't include every passing source. Here one way to go about it would be to look for overview sources and see what they consider worth mentioning. Or as Buidhe said. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:56, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

@Buidhe and Jo-Jo Eumerus: Thanks for the helpful and practical explanation. Relying on overview sources to decide what the main topics are and how they should be weighted has also been my approach so far. More specific sources can be used to fill in details and for some details it may be optional whether to include them or not.

Personally, I often find myself in a situation where a reviewer requests the addition of a topic that is somehow relevant but not discussed in any of the overview sources. I'm not sure how to best handle this type of request and I would be interested to hear how you react in such cases. Unless there is a good reason otherwise, I usually try to find a place within the existing structure to add anything from a footnote to a paragraph (depending on the circumstances) without making any drastic changes to the article. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:33, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, it really depends. Overview sources are not perfect but they are probably the best thing we have to go on, so if it's not mentioned there I may be inclined to push back on the request and suggest inclusion in a sub-article instead. I can remember cases where there is an aspect that is clearly one of the things the topic is known for, but not mentioned in overviews, but I've only seen it with narrower topics. (t · c) buidhe 16:46, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I think that you probably need to follow the advice above, have an objective(ish) breakdown of what should go into the article in what proportions, and argue WP:UNDUE at reviewers who want to add interesting bits and pieces. At worst they should end up saying that it is a fine article but opposing promotion on the narrow grounds of it not including X, or not enough of X. Which will punt the final decision to the coordinators; who aren't enthusiastic about overriding opposes, but can do and have done. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:03, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I probably have to work on better communicating these points to reviewers who may not be familiar with the overview sources, for example, by clarifying why a suggestion is WP:UNDUE. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:50, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

For whatever it's worth, I, at least, would much prefer hashing things out on the backside of Wikipedia over getting just a footnote or a sentence in response to something I have claimed deserves a section. Please take as just a friendly note! Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 23:38, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Maybe you are right that taking a stricter stance on this is preferable. I sometimes find myself implementing suggestions for which it is not directly clear that they constitute improvements.

It's a good point about overview sources being our best guess. There may be exceptions in specific cases but the burden of proof is on who wants to go against the overview sources, especially if that would involve considerable changes to the article. One danger looming here is the reliance on personal opinions and original research about the prominence of certain topics. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:37, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I think this emphasises the importance of peer review before FAC, especially for big-picture topics. PR is really the place these questions should be nutted out. I know you use PR, for instance re. the Knowledge article, but don't always gain a great deal of input. Perhaps more active pinging of relevant projects and some of our experienced reviewers could help. This is also a reminder for our regular FAC reviewers that there's no need to wait for something to appear at FAC before having a look, keep an eye on PR too. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:36, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Template:FAC peer review sidebar is an excellent tool to keep an eye on FAC wannabe articles. - SchroCat (talk) 11:02, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Agreed that while PR may not be a magic pill, it can be quite useful for identifying potential difficulties. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:59, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Phlsph7,

I appreciate your diplomatically not naming names, but I am guessing my critical comments and eventual opposition to the promotion of knowledge is no small part of what motivated this query.

I most readily name myself, however, and I welcome feedback here or on my talk page—should anyone here actually have the patience to read through all the comments and have any advice to share. I'm new to the process, and I genuinely welcome it.

To get to the general point: Is it correct that the burden of proof is on the reviewer to provide alternative tertiary sources, rather than upon the nominator to defend the comprehensiveness of the overview sources upon which the article relies (in the event this is called into question)? Because the comprehensiveness of overview sources emerged as an explicit point of disagreement in the discussion about this nomination, and this went nowhere productive. Obviously a great deal will vary on a case-by-case basis, but is there a rule of thumb?

I took myself to establish the non-comprehensiveness of these sources with reference to large fields of study with large literatures that I took to be (and was ready to defend in elaboration) quite obviously and directly concerned with the declared topic of the article in a way not covered by the governing overview sources. Although I can see the other side of the issue, I would submit that reviewers should not be expected to go out and review university press handbooks/companions/encyclopedias/glossaries/whatever to legitimize a content-based objection with a supporting secondary literature.

Please, please, please, I must be clear that I am not interested in further litigating this nomination. (And to whatever extent I am further justifying a call I did not want to make, this is in spite of myself.) As I said in both my first post and the penultimate post in which I opposed nomination, I have no problem whatsoever being overruled by a coordinator if I've misunderstood "comprehensiveness". This stands.

For such a general topic as knowledge, however, I continue to believe that reference to disputed tertiary sources will tend mostly to just displace the alleged problem. And, I must add, tend also to exasperate and discourage well-meaning editors trying to contribute at the level of content coverage. No one is going to participate in this process if it requires reading the most cited sources from a very long bibliography and, further, researching additional sources situated at a just-so level of generality.

In short, I echo the frustration of the OP. For issues as general as knowledge (or, coming up, existence—and so @Gog the Mild, not merely a rhetorical question, I do not think!), the current guidelines seem to sometimes leave editors involved at an unfortunate impasse. The closest thing I have to a solution is well stated by another reviewer of this nomination, @Shapeyness: with a topic as massive as knowledge, it is also pretty much impossible to even cover every area of study in the literature, never mind assess weight in the totality of high-quality reliable sources. For that reason, I think that the coverage of the article is (more than most other Wikipedia articles) a matter of editorial judgement and editor agreement. This too, however, is hardly without problems.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 23:29, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I may also be one of those editors because I questioned the comprehensiveness of education on a global scale. My interpretation of global topics is that we cannot use narrow definitions to describe systems that are alien to most of the world. My measuring stick would be that as the EU/US systems represent only 14% of the world population the bulk of the article should describe how systems work elsewhere, how they are interpreted/valued elsewhere, etc. Likewise, since women/girls make up 1/2 of the world's population and ethnic minorities make up around 20% of the population, I would expect that as there are differences in how systems treat those large segments of the population that they be given sufficient weight in the discussion. While I grant that it may be harder and there may be language barriers which impact finding sourcing on say Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, or the Pacific than it is to find examples from the EU/US, every effort should be made to do so, or the article isn't really, for example a general article on "Education", but instead an article on "Western" education. I am never one to impose my views on anyone, I offer it merely for perspective and consideration. SusunW (talk) 14:20, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Consensus here so far appears to be that comprehensiveness and weight are to be determined by overview sources and the weight they give to the subtopics. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to imply that we don't need to come up ourselves with complex personal arguments based on things like historical considerations or population statistics. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:15, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that you are distorting what I said. If we know that the majority of people do not live in the EU/US, we should be looking for sources elsewhere to create that overview and weight of topics. What do Chinese sources, Indian sources, AU sources indicate that the important aspects and topics are? Are they the same as in the Western world, or different? It's about balance and NPOV. SusunW (talk) 15:14, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

What is at issue, it seems to me, is how to respond to questions about the adequacy of an overview provided by any given source (or cluster of related sources, i.e., those all written from a perspective of dubious universality). Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 15:34, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily say that is the case. I would agree with Susun that in some cases the overview can be biased and the education article cannot be considered comprehensive if it doesn't have adequate coverage of the entire world. For example, in the torture article cases regarding the United States, armed conflicts and political prisoners are greatly overrrepresented in the sources. That does not excuse me for writing an article that covers the forms of torture that are most prevalent in the world, even if they are less studied... (t · c) buidhe 16:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Apologies if I misconstrued the original explanation as an argument about using population statistics to infer weight. I'm in no way opposed to the idea that we have to be careful about which sources to pick and should rely on high-quality overview sources since biased sources are likely to have biased weights. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:52, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm a relative newcomer to WP:FAC, but my approach has been to oblige such reviewers when I deem the requests to fall within a reasonable interpretation of WP:Balancing aspects, and to tell them that it would be undue based on the overall coverage in the sources in the remaining cases. Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mars in fiction/archive1 is a case in point. TompaDompa (talk) 19:35, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Another point that might be good to clarify: is it impossible for articles on broad topics like these ones to fulfill the comprehensiveness criterion? I guess the answer is already contained in the responses above but I'm asking because some reviewers explicitly used this idea as an argument against promotion. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:10, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Given that you have recently successfully nominated logic, philosophy and communication, I assume the question is rhetorical. Just ensure that such reviewers are clear that this is their only objection. Gog the Mild (talk) 11:29, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Appologies for the trivial question. I fear that this point may also come up in future nominations so it's good to have a consensus to point to in case I have trouble convincing the other party. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:07, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

While in my own experience I've never (luckily) had a reviewer make "demands" that I didn't think would improve the article, but have seen plenty of instances where the nominator should let an oppose stand, after giving refuting rational. Speaking generally here, but aware of the poisoning of the well effect, and FAC shouldn't require the support of 100% of the reviewers who give a vote. I know the co-ords know and practice this but re-stating anyway. Ceoil (talk) 00:23, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

One difficulty here is that the FA process gives more weight to opposes than supports. It's true that there are also certain guidelines for disregarding objections without merit, but in some cases, a lot of background knowledge on the topic and its sources is required to assess the merit of an objection and it's probably not feasible to expect the coordinators to aquire this type of knowledge before making their assessment. In other words, if someone opposes based on misguided but difficult-to-assess reasons, this constitutes a significant obstacle to promotion. But then again, the FA process should be demanding, so I'm not sure that there is a good alternative to avoid this problem. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:29, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Might this to some extent be a problem of too few reviewers knowledgeable about the topics of nominated articles? Or of reviewers shying away from commenting more frequently and directly on one another's suggestions? For instance, it was important to me in deciding to oppose that two other editors who work in the area expressed similar reservations, at least at the general level. If it weren't for this, I probably would have remained officially neutral (albeit with a sizable record of objections—not sure how, or if, that is taken into account). Or, if other reviewers had expressed concern that I was being unreasonable, I would have probably withdrawn the oppose. That is to say we could all have proceeded more-or-less according to the normal policies on consensus; and in a limited way we did, but a few more people engaging a little bit more directly with one another would likely, at least in this instance, have resulted in a smoother process and a more timely decision. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:46, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi Patrick, I'm not sure that its a matter of "too few reviewers knowledgeable about the topic"; in this instance the issue was that you/others and Phlsph7 disagreed on the locus of the article. I did follow the review closely, and while, for this article, tended towards the nominators POV, the difficulty of establishing the correct balance is significant, and one of the contributing factor why the majority of FA candidates tend towards smaller scale topics; an opposite is The Core Contest which has yielded some incredible results over the last 5 years. I have a lot of thoughts but no answers for FAC off the top of my head, but do welcome this discussion and am very glad Phlsph7 has opened it here...I'm worrying about a similar fate for Tomb effigy, which is primarily an art-historical page about 11th and 12th c. innovations in France and England, but could be face accusations of not giving equal balance and separate sections to every country where these innovations spread through (see also how the contagion section of Black_Monday_(1987) was met here). Ceoil (talk) 21:56, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Ceoil, you correctly identify the decisive point of contention. My suggestion above is just that this might have been resolved much earlier in the process had there been a few more people competent and willing to take a strong stand (how ever provisional) when it first came up. That would not necessarily be the outcome, but it would have been a stronger possibility. Also, secondarily, and speaking just for myself: when one person disagrees with a position I've taken, my instinct is to assume that I just need to explain myself better, which can lead to lengthy and unproductive exchanges; when multiple people disagree with my position, however, I am more likely to drop the issue without very much additional discussion in acknowledgement of the consensus (whatever I might continue to think myself). Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 23:22, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

To be more clear, my worry is that, opposes, whether carrying underlying weight or nor, may be given more weight than supports, because of a lack of expertise by others. I have to admit finding your unusually happy to pour doubt on many other article talk pages, in what might be seen as a "know some but not a lot" type ego trip. Ceoil (talk) 23:30, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I take issue with "unusually happy", but otherwise thank you for your candidness. I will try to be more aware of knowing what I don't know, inasmuch as I am able. Otherwise, however, I don't see how taking a strong stand on a talk page is a problem—so long as civility and other relevant policies are observed. If there is something in particular to which you would like to call to my attention, perhaps follow up on my talk page? Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 23:43, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I've struck that bit; sorry but surely any stand on talk pages or FAC noms should be measured on substance rather than civility. I notice you are very verbose, circular, and tend not to make actionable points. Ceoil (talk) 23:50, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate that. And I agree completely about the priority of substance. (Had it been Phlsph7's editorial conduct under assessment, I would've supported with enthusiasm!) Although there's probably not much that can be done about my long-windedness, please do not be shy about speaking up if I appear to be engaging in circular reasoning or pressing an unactionable point. Unless it pertains to the general FAC issue under discussion, however, I again suggest moving this to my talk page or some other more appropriate venue. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 00:05, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

When I've worked on high level articles (Australian Defence Force, Air raids on Japan and a few others), my test for comprehensiveness was whether the article covered everything noted in other high level overviews of the topic, such as short books and magazine articles. I also consulted all the major book length works on the topic to ensure that the articles covered the main issues they covered, as well as to ensure that they reflected the views of the authors. I also consulted the recent academic and 'grey' literature to ensure that the articles reflected the topics modern experts consider worth covering. There isn't an exact science here though - the key principle to keep in mind that these are encyclopedia articles, so should provide a high level overview of the topic without needing to cover absolutely everything about it. Nick-D (talk) 02:43, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Its completely different. Your articles have the words Australian and Japan in their titles, narrowing scope. Ceoil (talk) 00:09, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I had this problem with History of military logistics. While it would easily meet your test of comprehensiveness, there were concerns about whether the individual sections accurately reflected what child articles would have said if they existed. This was not a case like PatrickJWelsh describes where there were too few knowledgeable reviewers per se; rather reviewers were knowledgeable in a particular subtopic. Unlike Air raids on Japan, books on the parent are few, although the literature on the field is massive. Wikipedia:Summary style posits writing articles top down, with the high-level article being written first and child articles created from it. We all know that seldom happens because of the difficulty of writing the high-level articles. The alternative is bottom up, where the parent article aggregates the children. Which would be straightforward, if the children actually exist. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:21, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Not sure where to add this comment, but since I was pinged up above, here are some thoughts. Generally I would agree that overview sources are a really good way of establishing due weight within an article. But there are a few things (I think) that should also be considered.

One is: is that overview source looking at the topic from a particular point of view? I'll take an example from an article I've worked on. There are quite a few overview sources used in Quine–Putnam indispensability argument - most of them (understandably) are concerned almost solely with the substance of the argument. They give very little room to its history, development, or legacy. But they are specialist overviews, not a general encyclopedia. There is a growing field of Quine scholarship tracing the development of Quine's thought. Should we ignore all of it because most of the overviews on indispensability arguments have a more narrow focus? My view is that weight in the overall literature should be assessed where possible, hence our indispensability argument article going into more depth on the history than many of the specialist overviews it cites.

Obviously this approach is not possible for Knowledge - how would one assess the totality of sources on such a broad topic! Nonetheless, my worry for the article when reviewing was that it was over-focused on philosophy simply because philosophers tend to write overviews specifically on that topic, even if it is important to other fields. But I don't really have any expertise outside philosophy (except some knowledge of physics) so it's possible that I'm completely mis-judging the situation, and I'm not 100% sure how to address the worry. Ideally I think the article needs a lot of different eyes on it from people with different areas of expertise, but I get that's not necessarily practical. Insofar as the article is concerned with philosophy, it seems comprehensive to me as someone with a little bit of knowledge in the area. But I wasn't confident to support without knowing if there was broader support for such a focus. And most of the overviews used in the article have a narrow philosophical focus, so they also didn't make me feel as confident as I would have liked either.

Hopefully that makes some sense and expands on my comments from the review in a way that is useful. Shapeyness (talk) 10:50, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation. I think, ideally, one should not base the weight on a single overview source but consult several ones. Many topics are somehow relevant to several fields but it's often the case that one field is the main field studying this topic. My take is that, in such cases, it makes sense to reflect this in the article instead of giving equal weight to each minor field. There are encyclopedias of many different fields, not just philosophy. Examples from our article are an entry on knowledge management from an encyclopedia of communication and an entry on knowledge representation from an encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences. Their articles should be fine to use as overview sources for certain subsections. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:11, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Here are the FAC reviewing statistics for March 2024. The tables below include all reviews for FACS that were either archived or promoted last month, so the reviews included are spread over the last two or three months. A review posted last month is not included if the FAC was still open at the end of the month. The facstats tool has been updated with this data. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

The following table shows the 12-month review-to-nominations ratio for everyone who nominated an article that was promoted or archived in the last three months who has nominated more than one article in the last 12 months. The average promoted FAC receives between 6 and 7 reviews. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, is the underlying data compiled by hand? Edge3 (talk) 03:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Partly. A bot creates its best guess and puts it in User:Mike Christie/sandbox. I then go through with the FAC archive on a second screen and edit it to correct things the bot wasn't able to spot -- e.g. I remove edits that are not reviews, such as formatting fixes. Then the bot returns and generates the text posted above. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:53, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

What is to be done if a GA which is a FAC does not meet basic GA criteria? It contains original research, copyright violations and close paraphrasing, does not address the main aspects of the topic, its sourcing is also problematic. Borsoka (talk) 03:33, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

• That's what the oppose is for. (t · c) buidhe 04:05, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
• If I had to guess, you'd probably not want an article in that state becoming an FA, so definitely oppose the candidacy. If you feel like its good article status should be stripped, the next course of action would be a good article reassessment. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:51, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
• I have come across this situation. I opposed the nomination, noted that I would have closed it as a WP:QUICKFAIL if it were a WP:Good article nomination, and suggested that the nomination be archived so the article could be brought to WP:Good article reassessment. TompaDompa (talk) 05:53, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

This discussion has now escalated to WP:ANI#Crusading movement. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:12, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the right venue, but it is relevant to a lot of articles, so I thought it was best to discuss it in a more general place than a specific FAC. At the Nasutoceratops FAC, Gog the Mild asked for citations supporting the specific colour patterns shown in the life restorations of dinosaurs used in the article (some of which are depicted with eye spots and other bold patterns), or if it could be stated in the captions that the colours shown are conjectural. I replied that while we have sources that say that dinosaurs generally could have been boldly patterned for display as in modern animals, we don't have sources that mention eye spots or these animals in particular (we do know partial colouration of a few other dinosaurs), though we do have artwork by palaeontologists that show such patterns in related dinosaurs (though without the captions of these images pointing out the patterns). Note that the used images do have citations on Commons that support their general anatomy, and have been reviewed at WP:dinoart.

I objected to stating directly in the image captions that colours are conjectural, as this isn't how relevant sources caption their images (as it is assumed to be a given that their colours are generally unknown, and colouration is only mentioned in captions when actually known), and we should follow how the literature covers it instead of in an original way. It would also set a precedent whereby we have to mention this in thousands of image captions across Wikipedia where we use life restorations of prehistoric animals whose colours are unknown (which is also why I don't think a single FAC should be testing ground for such a proposal, it should be discussed widely first). I instead suggested it could be mentioned in the alt text that the images show conjectural colours, or that reliably published images which show similar colouration could be referenced in the Commons description, to keep it out of the already very long captions. Gog failed the review because he thinks we should solidly source anything we say or portray in the article itself I presume, but I disagree in this case for the reasons mentioned above, as well as per WP:OI and WP:PERTINENCE (policies which have been brought up in previous discussions of paleoart), hence I would like to hear some more opinions. FunkMonk (talk) 14:23, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Gog. "it is assumed to be a given that their colours are generally unknown" what is a simple assumption for you is likely not for a general reader. Adding "colouring conjectural" or similar is not that big of a deal, and keeps readers firmly aware of what we know and don't know. I'm reminded of that story where a scientist from a future where spiders are extinct time-travels back to now, and is absolutely flabbergasted when he learns that they have webs. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:37, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the difference between Wikipedia's presentation and in reliable sources is that, despite being based on sources and reviewed by other contributors, Wikipedia's reconstructions are fundamentally amateur work, and especially when dealing with content one cannot verify (besides they're gone, or extinct, or whatever) it's fair to explain the limits of what can be assumed versus evidenced. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:01, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

If it's a historic image I absolutely oppose colorization because the colors are not known to us. This image being entirely original, I don't see the issue because if you can draw the dinosaur you can also add color, even if it's consistent with what we know there must be quite a bit of originality. (t · c) buidhe 15:24, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

As Gog's request seems to just add the two words "colouring conjectural" to the caption, I'm not sure what the problem is. The colouring is conjectural, after all. If scientists crack some genome that shows they were really purple and green, then new images can come and the two words removed, but I don't think the request is a problematic one. - SchroCat (talk) 15:29, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that captioning it "Three ceratopsids...." seems misleading. Would folks be satisfied with a caption along the lines of "Paleoartist's representation of three ceratopsids..."? Just clicking through some arbitrarily selected dinosaur FAs I see a lot of "Restoration of...", "Hypothetical feathered model...", "Artist's impression of...", "Life restoration of...", "Reconstruction of...". In fact, I don't really see other FAs (though I haven't looked very hard) where artist's renderings are referred to as fact. I don't love "colouring conjectural" as I assume(?) much more than the colouring is left to conjecture. Ajpolino (talk) 15:31, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

It is a novel suggestion, yes, I've never seen it before. But if we assume this is the road we want to go, we should clarify how exactly we want to do this, and what the wider implications are. So for the proponents, how would the article in question look? It has three such palaeoartistic reconstructions, should they all have a note saying the colouration is conjectural, or is it enough in the caption of the first restoration? And should every single usage of such palaeoart anywhere on Wikipedia have such a caption? Either way, I think it would be good to have a note on use of palaeoart in the general WP:manual of style for images, as issues relating to their creation and use are recurring themes, and the WP:palaeoproject's internal WP:palaeoart guidelines probably won't be accepted as "official", Wikipedia-wide guidelines by non-members. FunkMonk (talk) 22:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Ajpolino—each artist's rendition image should be clearly labeled as such so that it cannot be confused with an actual photograph. Once it is labeled clearly (in each caption), it's obvious to the reader that some aspects (such as the coloring) are creative rather than documentation of information. (t · c) buidhe 22:14, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Usually we mark them like that by stating it is a life restoration/life reconstruction, which links to the article on palaeoart. FunkMonk (talk) 22:29, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: It is a novel suggestion... I've never seen it before I assume you mean specifically "Paleoartist's representation"? To be clear, I'm fine with the other examples I quoted from dinosaur FAs (e.g. "Life restoration of...", "Artist's impression of...). I suspect that would be fine with many others, though I'm extrapolating a bit from their actual comments. Clicking at random through some of your other FAs, I see you typically use versions of that when captioning artists' renderings. I'm not sure why you chose not to do that at Nasutoceratops. But I think if you caption File:Kaiparowits fauna.jpg in the typical way (by explicitly calling it out as a life restoration), most people will be happy. Ajpolino (talk) 16:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

No, I've never seen "colouring conjectural" in a caption of a paleoartistic work, as this is usually a given. Writing "restoration/reconstruction" and similar is already the norm for such captions. In this case, "restoration of" could be added to the other captions as well, but the issue at hand was whether the captions should specifically mention colouration. FunkMonk (talk) 18:51, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: Below, Gog stated that he would be happy if the captions would just start with "hypothetical life restoration", without specifically mention the colouration. If you agree too, and nobody else objects, this would solve the issue. Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:23, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, so I wonder if I should make a vote of options, or if Gog the Mild and others would agree that the above caption would be fine if it said "Hypothetical life restoration of three ceratopsids from the Kaiparowits Formation: Utahceratops, Nasutoceratops, and Kosmoceratops". And this should be done with every restoration in a single article, just to be clear? FunkMonk (talk) 19:28, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

So far as the image review that started this is concerned, if you were to do that I can't see why I wouldn't pass it. And it seems an acceptable way of handling any future similar cases, although I am sure there are other broadly acceptable turns of phrase. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:34, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Alright, consider it done (in a few moments), and yes, that could be implemented in future nominations. And I think this and related issues should be formulated into a guideline somewhere, at least somewhere at the palaeontology and dinosaur project pages. FunkMonk (talk) 19:40, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I had also hoped that marking all those images as "life restorations" or "artist's impressions" in the captions would be clear enough (still missing in the example caption btw). While I do see some merit in explicitly pointing out that the colours are created by the artist, I fear that this statement – added under all such images – very quickly feels repetitive. If we decide that such a statement is required, I would suggest to be pragmatic and limit this requirement to the first such image in an article, and to FAs only (since these are much more exposed to readers without any background knowledge). However, I do not particularly like the wording "conjectural" or "hypothetical", because this could imply that scientists have some vague hypothesis about the colors, which is not the case – the colors are merely an invention of the artist. Therefore, we would need a statement such as "colours in ceratopsids are unknown", if we decide to include such a statement. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:44, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. I think one issue here is that folks may interpret the lack of colouration as evidence that dinosaurs were colourless. Certainly that's how white statues from antiquity were interpreted before we found evidence that they were coloured. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 06:48, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Jo-Jo, I don't think that any one is suggesting that - if they have, I have missed it. By all means let us have a best guess as to how the creatures were coloured and patterned in reconstructions. My view is that in such cases we should clearly tell a reader that they are just that - a guess. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:48, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@Gog the Mild: I wonder if you would find stronger wording like "hypothetical life restoration" in the image captions sufficient? I fear that, if we are specifically stating that the colors are guesswork, the reader might assume that all other aspects are not guesswork, but that is only partly true (for example, we don't know how fleshy these animals were, how the skin folds looked like, and how long the horns were exactly because only the horn cores are preserved but not the keratin cover). Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Jens, you won't get an argument from me over any of that. I think that this discussion is an attempt to establish a consensus on the principle, using my comments as a concrete example. As FunkMonk points out, a local consensus for a different approach has developed. There seems to me - I am more than open to correction - to be a consensus among the FAC community that reconstructions should labelled as conjectural, and that this should be in each and every case. I would (further?) propose that every such image has its caption start with "A hypothetical life restoration of ..." or something similar in meaning. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:08, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Gog the Mild, sorry if I misunderstood. My question was just if you would personally be satisfied if the image captions in Nasutoceratops would start with "A hypothetical life restoration" (a change with witch I would fully agree), or whether you think that an additional note explicitly stating that the colors are unknown is also necessary. Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:14, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I personally would be happy with that. Barring further more convincing arguments from others. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:39, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

This seems very reasonable and in line with existing practice for palaeontology FAs. Any further and the text written to justify the restoration could very well become more OR than the restoration itself. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 19:10, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

This would work best, I think. The Morrison Man (talk) 18:22, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

The Columbian mammoth article has a few art examples, which have captions including "1909 life restoration by Charles R. Knight based on the same specimen", "life restoration (right) based on same; the extent of the fur is hypothetical", "by Robert Bruce Horsfall, 1911", "Fanciful restoration of a Columbian mammoth hunt, J. Steeple Davis, 1885", and one piece of art which has no explanation in the caption. I would agree with Ajpolino and Jens Lallensack that if some indication of restoration/impression is clear then there isn't a need to also explicitly point out colours in the article caption. CMD (talk) 11:29, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Only just found this out, but here's the Magic Cave's suggestion box for future Wikipedia Library resouce partners. Lots of solid potential vis à vis both newspaper and academic texts. Scroll down the list and upvote at your leisure. (Note that some of them have been partnered already some time—I have no idea why there're still there.) ——Serial Number 54129 15:47, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

They even added one of my suggestions! (t · c) buidhe 16:01, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Goldfinger! Wot one was that Buidhe? :) ——Serial Number 54129 19:31, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Central and Eastern European Online Library (t · c) buidhe 19:33, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Voted a few up. Shame that few people use Lyell or GeoScienceWorld. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 06:42, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Also, there seem to be a fair number of duplicates in the list. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 06:42, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I'm Pbritti! I primarily create content related to Christian liturgical and American architectural subjects, with six GAs in those areas. I've been interested in the FAC process for a long time but have never felt comfortable participating when I still sometimes feel like a novice regarding the higher-level considerations. After much work, consultation, and further self-assessment, I finally feel ready to nominate an article: Free and Candid Disquisitions, on a mid-18th-century religious pamphlet by John Jones that had a substantial impact on Anglican and Unitarian worship practices. The article passed as a GA earlier this year and underwent a low-turnout PR more recently. Given my inexperience, I am extending a request for a mentor.

Some considerations for a possible mentor:

• I live in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States (presently UTC−04:00)
• My work schedule causes peaks and valleys in activity on-Wiki but I edit daily. For the next couple months, I'll be fairly available with four-day weekends
• I have access to the Wikipedia Discord but would prefer to communicate either on-Wiki or via email
• I'm more than willing to offer my help in any tedious project on-Wiki as compensation for mentorship (maybe you need someone who can swap umlauts for diaereses across a couple hundred articles?)

If you're interested or wish for me to offer further details regarding myself and my proposed FAC, please reply here or on my talk page. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 02:00, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

I mentioned this at WT:GAN, but there may be editors here who would be interested who don't watch that page: I've created a GA statistics page that takes an editor's name as input and returns some summary information about their interactions with GA. It shows all their nominations and reviews, and gives a summary of their statistics -- number promoted, number that are still GAs, and the review-to-GA ratio. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:49, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

A useful summary! Thank you. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 11:55, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Very handy. Thanks Mike. Although "Promoted GA nominations: 108; Promoted GA nominations that are still GAs: 50" caused me to panic before I realised that it was because 58 GANs had been promoted to FA, and so - technically - they ceased to be GAs. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:34, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm trying to work out my Promoted GA nominations: 17 but Promoted GA nominations that are still GAs: 37 ... followed by a lit of 19! - SchroCat (talk) 08:08, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

It was a combination of two things. One was a bug -- if a nominator put spaces around their username, as happened here for example, the tool was not removing them, so that nomination was credited to ' Schrodinger's cat is alive' with a leading space. That's now fixed, so asking the tool for GAs for that old user name will now correctly report those old GAs. The "still GAs" number is maintained by SDZeroBot, which automatically tracks username changes -- that's why it shows 37 for "SchroCat". I decided not to automatically connect old usernames to new ones because not everyone wants their old usernames advertised, but I can do so on request. I'm going to assume in your case you do want to connect them since the signature was "SchroCat" even back then, so I've added your names to the name-change list. You should now see the correct results -- let me know if anything still looks wrong. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:50, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Ah - that looks much more like it. Thanks Mike! - SchroCat (talk) 11:25, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Nice work, and thanks to Mike for fixing the GAN bot's count of successful nominations for those of us with apostrophes. Cheers — Tim O'Doherty (talk) 17:00, 15 April 2024 (UTC)