Memory Alpha talk:Peer review

Checking for PRs
You need to have nominations listed here so people know when there's a new nomination... Nobody's gonna check the category page every day to see if something's been added. That's just silly. Ben Sisqo 03:17, 25 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * Whether it is this or the category page, people would have to check some page regularly anyway - this could be avoided to a degree if you (and others) would actually start using the edit summary. :) -- Cid Highwind 11:25, 25 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Archive talk
Has the move of discussions from the various "/peerreview" subpages to a central archive page been discussed anywhere? I don't think it makes any sense to do so - this page will become too cluttered, and it will be less easy to locate the various discussions. -- Cid Highwind 13:00, 8 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * And having a subpage for makes more sense? --Alan del Beccio 13:04, 8 Nov 2005 (UTC)

The peer review page is a subpage of the article's talk page, not of the article's page itself - and yes, I think it does. At least more sense than a humongous archive of all past peer reviews. We are trying to move old "Ten Forward" discussions to other talk pages instead of the TF-archives. We are moving old VfD-discussions to talk pages instead of an archive, if possible - why should we do it the other way round here? -- Cid Highwind 13:13, 8 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Why is ONLY added to the talk page?
Policy currently states that the template should only be added to the talk page of an article that is undergoing peer review. Why is this? If it went on the article page as well, I think we'd alert more people to the fact that the article is being peer reviewed and, therefore, get more participants in the peer review process. God knows something needs to be done to liven up the peer review (and FA nomination) processes and get a few more participants! – Taduolus 18:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I wondered about that myself. I agree 100% that something is needed for the peer review and FA nominations, and putting the peer review thing on the main page is not be a bad idea. Not everybody visits the talk page, I certanly didn't when I first opened an account here – Bertaut talk 19:55, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * That tag is only added to the talk page to avoid too much "clutter" for readers. The majority of people reading our articles isn't actively involved in the project, and thus doesn't really care whether an article is up for some sort of "review" process, or being considered as a Featured Article Candidate. Such things go to the talk page, where contributors might find them, and are also linked centrally at the top of the Recent Changes page (another page more relevant for contributors than for readers). On the other hand, tags that are also useful for readers (as, for example, the PNA templates showing that an article might be wrong in some way) are added to the article itself. -- Cid Highwind 21:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Unless something recently changed, the Featured Article Candidate template goes in the article, not the talk page. --OuroborosCobra talk 21:14, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I don't buy the "clutter" argument... as OuroborosCobra pointed out, the FA nomination notice goes on the article page, as do all of these! I don't think a peer review notice at the top of an article would distress the casual reader too much :o) – Taduolus 19:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Likewise, I don't buy the argument that you would get a single additional reply by having that template in another place - been there, done that. PR and FA simply are procedures apparently not too interesting for the active part of the community. And, as I already stated, all (or most) of these are directed at readers or first-time contributors who are not checking the talk pages. -- Cid Highwind 19:49, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * That's fine, but it still doesn't answer the original question - why is the template only added to the talk page? If the FA nomination template is added to the main page, why not add the peer review one as well? You may very well be right Cid, that it would get no extra people involved, I mean, God knows, the FA nomination goes on the main page, and that's been virtually dead since I joined up. But I think the point is 'is there any reason why the peer review template doesn't go on the main page'? And so far, it seems not.  I have to say, when I submitted  for peer review, I was really surprised that it had only gone on the talk page, I thought I'd done something wrong initially. Personally, I don't think it makes much sense to have the peer review template in one place and the FA nomination template in another  – Bertaut talk 20:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * There's a difference between just "not buying" an argument for some reason, and pretending that the argument hasn't been made in the first place.
 * To repeat in a more verbose form, this procedure has been designed, from the start, to not put any text in article space that is not useful there. Articles are for content, and content is read by readers. Readers are not the ones who make decisions about content, or they would be contributors. Contributors have better ways to discuss content than to make content less useful for readers by putting unnecessary "administrative text" in content space... :)
 * FA nominations are placed in content space because the procedure about it has been designed by another group of people, at another point in time. You're right, they probably should work the same way (and as you can see above, even I intuitively assumed they already do). However, if one of them gets changed to match the other one, I maintain that it should be the FA nomination that gets changed. -- Cid Highwind 20:50, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with Cid. "Administrative" stuff shouldn't clutter up the articles any more than necessary. As far as visibility, putting the text on the article pages (whether FA or PR) may make it visible to more readers, but those will overwhelmingly be casual readers, versus contributors. Do we really want casual readers involved in the FA or PR process? *I* don't think so... I added links to both FA and PR candidates to the top of the RC page months ago to increase visibility of both groups of articles to contributors, and I don't think it's done anything to coax more people to participate in the processes. (Those aren't the only processes that have low participation - new category approvals is another example.) In my mind, the FA process should be revised to be more like the FC process. -- Renegade54 21:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * "I think that the situation with talk pages is a symptom of a bigger problem. Peer review is dying, and I think it deserves to die."


 * In other words, I entirely agree FA and PR need to be, well, reviewed. They don't really seem to work well at the moment.


 * What's the FC process Ren54? Having a mental blank :-) – Cleanse talk 05:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I was wondering that myself, typed in 'fc' in the search and just got brought to ! I see your point now Cid. And just in my own defense, I wasn't pretending you hadn't made the argument (this isn't IMBD after all, if it were, we'd be insulting each other's mother/father/granny/dog etc by now), I just didn't think you'd made your argument very well. But nevertheless, it doesn't matter anyway. I think Mr. Cleanse is probably right. When you look at the activity on the forum, and whatnot, it's shameful that the FA and PR systems don't get more attention. Maybe if we wrote the notices in red??? – Bertaut talk 17:20, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * FC = PR. I dunno where the heck FC came from... lol. Brain fart, I guess. -- Renegade54 17:42, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Old peer review pages
If no one has a problem with it, I was going to move the text to the articles talk page and delete old peer reviews that didn't get any responses, which seem to be most of them, since it seems foolish to tell people to go to a different page for more information if there isn't any. - 19:50, June 5, 2010 (UTC)

Streamlining
I think this will make the peer review process even easier and reduce the amount of clutter left behind.

First, we don't have seperate pages anymore. The talk page is for suggestions to improve the page, and not using it for that, or suggesting that it shouldn't be, is counterproductive. For this, peerreview would be motified to provide a link to a section of the talk page entitled "Peer review", with an option to change it to something else, if needed, though I don't think that will be required.

Since there aren't separate pages, this page won't display the text. First off, I don't know why we would even want this page to do that, since you cann't navigate to sections using a table of contents, and you cann't participate in the discussion from here. The dpl would be modified to this: noresultsheader= namespace=1 uses=Template:Peerreview format = ,\n* %TITLE%,, If I got that correct, it should provide a link directly to the proper section if it hasn't been renamed, and if it has, the peerreview template at the top of the talk page provides the link.

Old peer reviews can either be done away with entirely, as in just removing the peerreview template, since the page tends to evolve past the point that anything said there becomes outdated, or nothing was said there that we need to point users to. If that's not your cup of tea though, the template can be altered to provide the link to the section in the same way peerreview was. In that case though, old peer reviews would be archived with the rest of the talk page, since generally if there's enough said to need that, the peer review should be out of date. - 17:06, February 13, 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree that it is unnecessary to duplicate the content of (several) talk pages here. However, I'm not sure I can agree with giving up separate talk pages for the peer review process completely. Although PR is not considered a mandatory step for advancing an article to FA status (although it should be IMO), it is mostly used that way by contributors or, alternatively, requested by people opposing the FA nomination for the moment. I believe it is useful to have all of that information in one place while the PR process is going on - and also after it has finished. Individual comments could of course move from the PR discussion to the main one, if considered necessary. -- Cid Highwind 17:30, February 13, 2011 (UTC)

14 days
The reasoning behind this is that no peer review should conclude with the article not able to be immediately nominated for FA status, and 14 days is the minimum a renomination needs. Also, an extra week makes sure there's enough time for those who aren't here every day to actually read the article and participate. - 05:24, February 26, 2011 (UTC)
 * No consensus has been reached on this. It doesn't matter what you say your own personal reasonings behind this are or if you think Donald Duck & Mickey Mouse will be happy only if it's 14 days and not 7, etc.; if no consensus has been reached, no consensus has been reached! --Defiant 21:36, March 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * I too would interpret the lack of comment in a week's time as tacit acceptance of the idea. If no one was moved enough to oppose it, then it must mean at a minimum that they don't mind.  It is not like Archduk is just making it up- it partially has to do with the FA renomination period and ensures that as many people can read it as possible while balancing the need to move forward. Do you have reasons for being opposed to the idea?--31dot 23:04, March 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * I can see a peer review having a 2 week quiet period as people get busy on occasion, but FA stuff should stick with the one week. -- sulfur 23:28, March 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * I think 14 days for PR is a good idea.–Cleanse ( talk 00:45, March 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't personally have reasons for being opposed to the idea, no, but it kinda seemed like quite a decisive decision, so I felt it would've been better for consensus to be confirmed first. I appreciate that it now has, so – by all means – go ahead. I have no problems with this; it's all cool! :) --Defiant 01:25, March 5, 2011 (UTC)
 * As it is, the peer review hasn't seemed to be getting much feedback generally (at least in comparison with the FAs), with some of the reviews having no comments before their time's been up, so I'm happy for a longer waiting period; it means possibly more comments, to help articles! --Defiant 01:32, March 5, 2011 (UTC)

Need?
IMO, peer review should be made compulsory, mainly because too many articles are being nominated for FA status before passing through this process, leading to many FA nominations for articles that are not completely ready for it. --Defiant 09:06, August 13, 2011 (UTC)
 * Absolutely oppose. Articles are not meant to be perfect when nominated for FA status, they are simply meant to be one of the best articles on the site. If any change needs to be made, it should be the end of the idea that the FA nomination process shouldn't contain minor changes and discussion, or that a lack of information from a source that isn't available to everyone should disqualify an article. PRs also historically draw little attention, and if they were compulsory, they would simply become the nomination process. Any article that makes it through a compulsory PR should be a FA since the suggestion would be that there is nothing wrong with it. If there was an oppose vote in the FA nomination in that case, all we've done is waste two weeks. Compulsory PRs would only work if participation was compulsory, and it never will be. - 16:25, August 13, 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually, the whole system of PR, FA and AotW needs an overhaul in my opinion. Currently, "Featured Articles" are not really featured in any way - while "Articles of the Week" are those articles which are actually featured, but are not really chosen weekly (see history of the current one, for example).
 * Of course, AotW might be chosen from the list of existing FA, but there's no consensus/voting about that choice going on, and the AotW revision of an article might differ considerably from its FA revision, if a year-old FA is chosen. What really needs to be done is to stop all those "vanity FA nominations" that make up a good part of the current process, and do it the other way around: Each week, have a majority voting to nominate some article to be featured as AotW (replaces current FA nomination). During the next two weeks, let everyone work on both the article and its main page abstract (replaces current PR-for-FA). In the week following that, have the article on the main page as AotW. -- Cid Highwind 16:44, August 13, 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm also not keen on the idea of a compulsory PR for the same reasons as Archduk. I think Cid might be on to something with his proposed changes- actually having the community choose the AotW would be better than what we do now, and would actually feature FAs. --31dot 19:44, August 13, 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm also interested in Cid's purposed changes, though I see a few problems with them, mostly that participation would be required, and if only a few people are contributing every FA nomination could be a "vanity FA nomination". Might it not be easier to "randomize" the current AotW system more while instituting some system of reconfirming older FAs? I've never been too keen on the idea of removing FA status to just renominate it again. That said, I would like to hear more. - 20:09, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

Basically, I just think there's a problem with the FA nomination system right now, as too many of the nominations seem to be vanity ones. As long as there's some changes made, I'm cool with that – I don't mind so much what the alterations are, but I definitely think we could improve on the current system. I also believe more of a "community spirit" could be promoted, with encouragement for certain articles to be worked on by community. --Defiant 20:43, August 13, 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not really buying into the "vanity nominations" concept. What happened to assuming good faith? If one looks at the history, you see that most (not all) "self-nominations" are really built upon solid work by the community over the years. I look at the history and talk page of and I see a strong community effort, with many contributors (it looks like pretty much every regular user ever) each doing a little that builds up to a lot over time. That's not saying that it deserves an FA, but if that's not community, I don't know what is. I also think in general there's an underestimation of how articles do get improved through FA, even if they don't make it.


 * Having said that, I'm totally open to reforming the process the way Cid proposes, and I'd do my best to make it work so long as the community pitches in. :-) –Cleanse ( talk 01:14, August 14, 2011 (UTC)
 * Firstly, I oppose making the PR process compulsory for all of the above and because nine times out of ten an article would just be sat there for 2 weeks with no comments. Yet, when it goes to FA there are dozens of oppose votes - I've experienced this myself, first hand. Additionally, I also reject this idea of "vanity nominations" for the same reason as Cleanse. It's true many of the articles I nominate I have worked on considerably to bring up to scratch. The reasoning is, because there are very few articles that are there, ready and waiting to be FAs and need so a little work doing to them. Also, people who do vote for "their own"(I use the term lightly) articles only get noticed more because there seems to be a distinct lack of anyone else nominating articles. Now, I'm not saying we should all go round nominating articles left, right and center, but if you come across the odd article you think is great, you may as well nominate it. It's not like you have an obligation to bring it up to scratch should it fail - it's a community effort. That's just my two cents, anyway. I hope it makes sense to you all and please don't take any of the above in any way personal. I've learned a disclaimer is sometimes needed at the end of comments on here. --| TrekFan Open a channel 13:27, August 14, 2011 (UTC)