Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 221

Background (tagline)

Apologies for the long text to follow but I think a detailed RFCBEFORE and implementation is necessary for such a highly-visible proposal.

There's been perennial proposals for increasing the visibility of page status, with a fair amount of assent but no proposed directions. Many editors in prior discussions have felt the topicon is too small a notice that doesn't accurately reflect the amount of work put into raising articles to featured status. Other editors think the topicons are opaque to readers, and feel that more prominence will draw editors to these backend projects.

• 15 April 2021: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 174 § Move good/featured article topicons next to article name closed as no consensus.
  Pinging Jr8825 as proposer.
• 23 October 2021: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 185 § Make FA and GA icons in articles more noticeable #2
  Missed this one, see note below from proposer Dege31.
• 1 February 2023: Wikipedia talk:Good Article proposal drive 2023 § Proposal 21: Make GA status more prominent in mainspace consensus to have an RfC on increasing visibility.
  Pinging czar as proposer.
• 1 March 2024: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 211 § Proposal: Remove the topicons for good and featured articles closed as snow keep, article quality important to readers
  Pinging Interstellarity as proposer.
• 14 April 2024: Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 31 § Proposal 10: Finish doing some or all of the things we agreed on last time we did this (lol)
  Pinging Thebiguglyalien as proposer.
• 11 January 2025: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 216 § Good Article visibility requesting the topicons in mobile, which is currently being worked on stale at phabricator:T75299.
  Pinging Iskandar323 as proposer.
• 20 March 2025: Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 66 § Metadata gadget as the default experience requesting technical feasability of modifying the tagline.
  Discussion opened by myself.

In this most recent discussion at the Idea Lab, I proposed using the tagline-modifying style of the metadata gadget which got some assent. Aaron Liu, WhatamIdoing, and Novem Linguae were helpful in pointing me toward Lua modules and how taglines are built into the software. While it wasn't feasible then, the recent implementation of phabricator:T380122 and addition of "Project-independent assessment" to the banner shell allows us to directly get FA/FL/GA status using Lua. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 19:33, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Implementation (tagline)

I've developed Module:Page assessment raw, a simplified version of Module:Page assessment that uses the newest features in the MediaWiki pageAssessments extension. I wanted to have a duplicate module to reduce the expensive function count (since this will be on every page) and to allow full- or template-protecting the module (for the same reason).

I think the most efficient way to implement this proposal is to fully replace the page MediaWiki:Tagline with a switch-case function to change the tagline based on the output of the Lua module:

{{#switch:{{#invoke:Page assessment raw|get_class|page={{FULLPAGENAME}}|project=Project-independent assessment}}
 | FA = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured articles (linked from tagline)|featured article]]'' from
 | FL = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured lists (linked from tagline)|featured list]]'' from
 | GA = A ''[[Wikipedia:Good articles (linked from tagline)|good article]]'' from
 | From
}} Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This example code also uses statistical redirects (suffixed with "linked from tagline") in the same manner as Elli's additions to the current topicons. This allows us to get a good view of how often readers click on these new taglines, and determine whether they're a useful addition to the project. In the month of June, about a third of visitors came to the featured articles page through the topicon. With these new statistical redirects, we can see how many use the tagline. Of course, if this passes, an admin should fully-protect these three redirects. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 19:33, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Survey (tagline)

• Support as proposer. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 19:33, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support a small change (probably smaller than people expect, considering the banner blindness phenomenon) which could nevertheless increase new editor attraction from people curious enough to click the link. I don't really see any downsides. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:19, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support. Good articles being invisible on mobile – 65% of our readers – doesn't make sense. Bringing us to some parity with the web version communicates to readers that some verification and vetting effort has been made, especially with the recently increased level of scrutiny required by GAs (and much-discussed at WT:GAN. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 20:23, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  This sadly won't affect mobile users as the tagline does not appear in Minerva. It would be a good impetus for bugging WMF over at Phabricator to show the tagline though. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 20:33, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Dan Leonard: Thanks for telling me that, although it is disappointing. I assume this affects web Minerva, too? If so, do we have any statistics on how many users aren't using Minerva at this point? I'd assume the number is relatively low, and largely our most engaged user base. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 22:31, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't know where to find skin usage statistics. OVasileva (WMF) made a couple pie charts at commons:Category:MediaWiki skin statistics, but they're of editors, not readers, and don't have details on where the source data is from. It does seem like there's an open task for the tagline to be shown at phabricator:T349117. Presumably if this RFC passes it can also be seen as a request from the English Wikipedia community to finish that request. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 22:40, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  As someone who edits exclusively from mobile, I support adding the tagline to the mobile skin. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:26, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  Wow, I have to commend you on your dedication to the project if you do it entirely on mobile. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 21:19, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  This seems like a different problem - wouldn't adding GA indicators in Minerva solve this? — xaosflux ^Talk 12:33, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  Other respondents mentioned here that mobile topicons don't seem to have any progress and community work on adding a mobile tagline would probably be easier than adding a mobile topicon, not to mention the engineering needed to have parity with tooltips on mobile. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:18, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support a minor change but a positive one. Anything that (1) raises awareness of our quality content and (2) might conceivably encourage readers to contribute is a good thing. Cremastra (talk) 20:48, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support taglines are harder to miss, so this does seem like an improvement. Would this also remove the topicons, or would a highlighted article end up displaying both? Paprikaiser (talk) 20:51, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  I think it's worth keeping both, at least for a trial period, to compare clickthrough rates. But maybe I'm just too addicted to pageview stats. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 21:00, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  For the record, I support keeping both. Topicons are cute. Paprikaiser (talk) 21:09, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support per Airship, though I think the current wording is needlessly verbose. I feel it could be more impactful if it said something like "A featured article, meaning it represents the best Wikipedia has to offer" IAWW (talk) 20:55, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  @It is a wonderful world I'm not sure I understand you. If you think the suggested wording is too verbose, why are you proposing a longer version? Cremastra (talk) 21:07, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  Sorry, verbose wasn't a good word. I mean the current wording doesn't make the best use of space. Adding "from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" is pointless, because the reader obviously already knows this. Those words could be replaced with something different that the reader doesn't already know, like what a "featured article" is. IAWW (talk) 21:23, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  The tagline "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" has been stable for a while after many thorny discussions, so I think replacing the language wholesale would be much more controversial than just squeezing in "a featured article". See the many subheadings of MediaWiki talk:Tagline/Archive 1 § "that anyone can edit". Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 21:33, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  I agree it would probably be tough to reach consensus and it should be a separate proposal to this. IAWW (talk) 22:43, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support As a drafter of a similar RfC that failed to reach consensus, I assume my !vote is no surprise... Dege31 (talk) 20:58, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  Ah, I thought my RFCBEFORE was complete. Thanks, I've added your discussion to the above list. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 21:16, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support I think this is a better way to make the good and featured stand out. If this proposal passes, I recommend removing the topicons. I would also like to implement this change to all the vital articles as well. For example, George Washington would say A level 3 vital and featured article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia while an article that is neither good nor featured, but vital like Christianity would say A level 3 vital article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Interstellarity (talk) 21:07, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  I'm not sure removing the topicons is necessarily a good plan, since many eyes will skip over the tagline entirely. Cremastra (talk) 21:08, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  Vital article status uses a very different method of data management so would require a different solution. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 21:18, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  That can be something we can discuss here or maybe the vital article talk page to figure out what level of organization is best. I'll leave a note on the talk page to get opinions on what method is best. Interstellarity (talk) 21:33, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  Vital article status seems less important, as not only is it less transparent to readers ("is level 1 vital the least or most important?"), but also only relates to the topic itself rather than the quality of the article they are reading. Knowing that what you are reading has been through a formal review process is great to gauge the level of trust you want to give to the article, knowing that the subject has been assessed to be important, less so. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:48, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  Beyond the technical limitation raised by Dan, Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Archive 25#Proposal for a VA "top icon" rejected a far smaller top icon for vital articles on the basis that unlike article quality, "vital" describes the subject itself which has little use to the reader already here to learn about it. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 22:49, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

• Weak oppose. Current system seems fine. Interestingly, neither icons nor tagline work on mobile web. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Phallological_Museum?useskin=minerva –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:12, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  At phabricator:T75299, JScherer-WMF explained the current roadblock in showing topicons in Minerva:

  For example, a FA/GA badge with enough context could be an interesting and valuable trust signal for a reader, similar to how warning templates are often used as distrust signals when articles are low quality. On the other hand, I assume that a "protected" badge would be of little interest to anyone who isn't logged in and actively considering contributing to the wiki.

  Another tension in the current proposal is the form of the indicators themselves. As mentioned in the VP discussions about this, there may be a low awareness of FA/GA for casual readers, and an unlabelled icon might not "onboard" casual readers into explaining what FA/GA are and why they're useful.

  While the tagline isn't currently shown in Minerva either, WMF might be more amenable to displaying it as it is likely technically simpler than showing topicons and solves the problem of an unlabelled icon might not 'onboard' casual readers. It's currently tracked, albeit stale, at phabricator:T349117. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 21:25, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support I'm already used to seeing it with Wikipedia:Metadata gadget, and, while classes below GA are more subjective, it could be great for our readers to highlight articles that have had a formal review process. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:44, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support been waiting a long time for this one. Very much needed! --JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 22:09, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support for GA/FA as long as we also keep the topicons; I think the visual cue is nice. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:39, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  2nd on this. Topicons are still nice and useful. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 23:32, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support; I agree with AirshipJungleman that it likely won't be noticed by the vast majority of users, but if one percent are intrigued and find out more about the Good & Featured processes, I think that makes it more worthwhile. I also agree with the takes that it'd be more applicable to mobile than a topicon would be, and I think it adds context to the topicons on desktop if people don't realize you can click on them. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 22:47, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support as the overdue implementation of repeated consensus for greater visibility. Like Chaotic Enby, I would never want this expanded to other article classes because many (myself included) use Rater for an AI-generated classification that works for our technical needs but communicates little to readers. I would have this appear alongside the topicon, both because the aesthetic badge is a big motivator for article writers and to run Dan's click-through experiment. Hoping that even if the topicons are never added to mobile view, at least this expanded tagline can be. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 22:55, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
• As I said in a previous discussion, I don't agree with the premise. I think the current amount of prominence given to the article rating is appropriate, given the way the rating is determined. Thus I do not support changing the tagline in this manner. isaacl (talk) 22:55, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  Since that comment is in turn referring to another comment, here's the link to isaacl's argument against greater visibility for GA/FA status. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 23:13, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  To expand slightly on the determination concerns: I appreciate that the good article/featured article review processes are the only ones we have for this type of article rating. However they do not ensure evaluation by subject matter experts with the background knowledge to best evaluate the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the article. I think giving the rating higher prominence would raise reader expectations that an evaluation has been made by subject matter experts. isaacl (talk) 15:10, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support per above. These two ratings are the ones with the least amount of arbitrariness so I don't think this status should have any less prominence. They're already displayed as topicons everywhere except Minerva, which shows the reader interest. If these statuses are any overprominent, there's already consensus for them being so. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:05, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose as the tagline should be kept simple. I agree with isaacl that we don't need to give more prominence to article ratings, which are subjective anyway. Some1 (talk) 23:27, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't see how this isn't simple. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:45, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

  A tagline that changes depending on the article rating isn't simple, and I prefer that the tagline text remains the same for every article, regardless of its rating. Also, it's misleading to state that Example article is "A good article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" when that rating reflects only one editor's review (opinion) of that article. In that instance, the tagline is more misleading than the topicon, especially when most readers won't bother to click on the good article link in the tagline.

  Many editors in prior discussions have felt the topicon is too small a notice that doesn't accurately reflect the amount of work put into raising articles to featured status Seems like this proposal is more for the editors than for the readers. Some1 (talk) 00:32, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  What's the impact of this small bit of added complexity?

  when that rating reflects only one editor's review (opinion) of that article

  I think that's only an argument for renaming GoodArticle. In my opinion, "good article" signifies only as much value as it should. This also means if a reader thinks "hey this is not good-article quality" they can start something on the talk page. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:20, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support. As long as we can keep the topicons as well, I don't see any downsides to this. – Epicgenius (talk) 00:08, 8 July 2025 (UTC)
• I don't see the harm per se, but more visibility for GA/FA ratings makes more critical the need for participation at WP:FAR and WP:GAR and for those processes to function properly. CMD (talk) 00:38, 8 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support. As I mentioned in the 2023 RFC: I once observed a high school classroom that happened to be teaching research skills on using Wikipedia. The teacher said that the lock icon in the corner meant that it had been reviewed and was safe. Readers have no idea what our esoteric icons mean, so a little explanation of what exactly is verified and what isn't could go a long way towards mutual incentives. This is a smart way to start. czar 02:08, 8 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support I don't see the harm in mentioning the fact that the article has reached good/featured status, and it would certainly help reader to become aware of those statuses and as a compliment to the topicons. Speaking of those icons, why don't we include them in the tagline too so the reader will notice it when reading the tagline and be able to recognize it when reading another article on its tagline or on the corner of said artile. So maybe something like "A good article from Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia." Here I placed the icon after the phrase introducing the article class since it looked akward to have it immediately following the indefinite article "A" when I tried that first. Gramix13 (talk) 02:52, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  This thought came to mind for me as well. I like the idea of having a more prominent visual, but I feel like it'd be redundant presuming we're keeping the topicon. My preferred approach to accomplish this would be to move the icon from the top right to directly next to the article title, as was previously proposed. Sdkb ^talk 05:09, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  Noting that since that 2020 proposal argued for matching the Danish Wikipedia's practice, dawiki has switched to our practice of having the topicon appear in the top-right corner (e.g., da:Israel). ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 13:40, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  Interesting; any idea why? Sdkb ^talk 14:18, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  Unfortunately not. I checked through their relevant talk pages and Landsbybrønden (village well) archives to no avail in identifying why they switched. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 16:04, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support. An article's good or featured status is a key piece of information that every media-literate reader ought to pay attention to, but our current display is nowhere near prominent enough to make that happen. This is a well-thought-out step in the right direction toward making that happen. I support keeping the topicons, and ultimately moving them next to the article title per the prior proposal. I also continue to hope that phab:T75299 is taken up so that icons display on mobile. Sdkb ^talk 05:07, 8 July 2025 (UTC)
• Strong support and additional request. I have a script that already does this, but this being an automatic thing for other editors would be extremely useful in helping people maintain articles. Possibly, we could also have 'Currently a featured article candidate', 'Former featured article', 'Currently a good article nominee' too; that might be a bit too technical though. 750h+ 05:18, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  Being a candidate or having former status is mainly relevant for editors, not readers, so I would not support this. Sdkb ^talk 06:03, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  +1 Graham11 (talk) 07:09, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  Wikipedia:Metadata gadget? It's a good thing the code is already pretty much there. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:25, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

• Comment – If we are to use a redirect like Wikipedia:Featured articles (linked from tagline), we should probably change the tooltip to simply "Wikipedia:Featured articles". Graham11 (talk) 05:34, 8 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support, great idea. I'd also support other measures to improve GA/A/FA visibility, like moving the topicon to be right beside the title. Toadspike [Talk] 09:12, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  My reaction to much of the opposition is that our readers are not stupid. They know what Wikipedia is. They will not see "good article" and think "this must be a 105% perfect article certified by the leading experts in the field and then fully-protected so no-one can edit the page again". They know that Wikipedia is a wiki written by regular people, many of whom are not experts on the topics they write about, and that Wikipedia articles can generally be edited by anyone, anytime. By calling something a "good article" or "featured article", whether in a tagline or with an icon, we simply argue that this article is better than many others. And while were bashing the names as "hokey" or "bizarre", I must point out that "featured" sounds stupid outside the context of being featured on the main page, while "good" is a simple English word that accurately describes the point of the rating. Toadspike [Talk] 13:34, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose The top of many articles, including GA and FA, are already overly cluttered. I would support the reduction of clutter rather than the adding to it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:01, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  I understand your point, but this would add practically no clutter, as "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" is still a default tagline. I assume you are generically opposed to the tagline in the first place? Dege31 (talk) 17:17, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  Yes I would support removing it altogether, rather than adding to it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:40, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  I agree with ActivelyDisinterested here Logoshimpo (talk) 05:08, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support. Awareness of the featured article process is partially what inspired me to begin contributing to Wikipedia, and I feel like increasing this awareness wouldn't just inspire more people to edit, but would also inform readers which articles have been more diligently reviewed to eliminate gaps and verification errors. Sad that this won't be visible on mobile but it's a step in the right direction with no glaring downsides. Fathoms Below (talk) 19:50, 8 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support. I can see no downsides to this proposal - anything that helps promote good and featured content, and potentially bring in new editors, is a positive in my book, and this is a pretty nice and yet non-obtrusive way to do so. CoconutOctopus talk 20:40, 8 July 2025 (UTC)
• Comment. It sounds like we are proposing adding a module to every single page load on the entire wiki. Has someone who understands mediawiki caching and performance given some thought about if this will cause stress to the servers or performance issues? –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:48, 8 July 2025 (UTC)
• Notified: WP:VPT. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:50, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  mw.title.new().pageAssessments is an WP:EXPENSIVE function, but since it is only called once it usually shouldn't often be an issue considering the per-page limit of 500. The module does access the class rating via iteration (see the for loop at lines 29–33) rather than via random access, which is admittedly inelegant but probably not too inefficient. Sadly, I got what feels like a WONTFIX for random access at phabricator:T396135.
  Regardless, whether the community wants something shouldn't be dependent on whether it is currently feasible. I trust the interface admins and WMF will fix things if the community breaks them.
  This isn't to say I am in any way opposed to a code review of this, which I welcome wholeheartedly. I am sure there is something here that could be made more efficient. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 23:10, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  I tend to agree with the link to WP:DWAP here (which has been relevant for parts of the interface like this before, the link to Category in the footer of each page used to be treated as sufficiently expensive for some reason or another that we couldn't let it vary by number of categories or something like that).

  The only way to get an authoritative answer to this question would be to ask WMF directly I think.

  That aside, I'm actually not really certain this will work the way OP wants it to. Has it been attempted on test Wikipedia? Izno (talk) 23:57, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  Putting my developer hat on, to my understanding the MediaWiki:tagline is added by a user's skin. As such, running page assessments at that layer is prohibitively expensive since the skin layer is re-rendered every time a user visits a page (as opposed to the parser cache layer where data is computed/rendered every edit and thus can have expensive functions). Unless folks contradict me, to my understanding this will require a significant investment of engineering effort to implement into core-mediawiki (or one of it's extensions) which I'm not sure is worth the outcome.

  Putting on my WP:INTADMIN hat on, I'm not sure I'm completely onboard with using JS (or even Lua) to hack and slash at the existing tagline at pages that we as enwiki are wanting folks to visit. (For context, every time such a thing is implemented folks with bad internet connection will see a flash of unstyled content that often makes the navigating/reading experience worse). Sohom (talk) 00:51, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  Oh dear, I didn't realize it was part of the skin. What a shame. Guess it'll have to rely on mw:Extension:CustomSubtitle if it's ever finished. I defer to SD0001 below, who wrote the MediaWiki code that makes this possible and seems to think it's potentially possible. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 01:01, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't think it's prohibitively expensive, just a bit expensive. Performance is not affected for logged-out users as for them the entire page html, including the skin, is CDN-cached. For logged-in users, it does result in re-rendering, however note that the Lua .pageAssessments call is just a single SELECT call in the db. Being marked as WP:EXPENSIVE doesn't give the full picture. – SD0001 (talk) 05:35, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

• Tend to oppose, but only for technical reasons. This should be part of MediaWiki (→m:Community_Wishlist/Wishes), not a Lua hack. Then maybe one day even mobile users would get it. Ponor (talk) 23:14, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  It definitely isn't a Lua "hack". Functionality like retrieving page assessments have been exposed to Lua for use cases like this. It doesn't make much sense to implement everything natively in MediaWiki since most MediaWiki installations don't have a concept of FAs or GAs. – SD0001 (talk) 05:37, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  Exposing page assessments to Lua is a part of MediaWiki. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:18, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  It's a hack because it hacks a message that shows at a place convenient for desktop users (⅓), but is not shown to mobile web and app users (⅔). It's not a complete solution, it's a hack. Other than that, there's a javascript gadget that also hacks the message, used by some 1000 active users. Why reinvent the wheel? Ponor (talk) 15:37, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Changed my mind, it's a complicated js script. I'd still like to see a solution that every reader can see. Indicators are fine. Ponor (talk) 15:48, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Using client-side JavaScript to scrape the talk page and modify the DOM after page load is a very different solution than using a MediaWiki extension's intended functionality to modify pages server-side. Mobile users miss out on a lot of things, including navboxes, sidebars, and even categories. Are categories "hacks" because Minerva chooses to hide them? Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 15:45, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Agree about the gadget, just checked the code: ugh, that's an ugly one. But here, we're saying "this is important, we want everyone to see it", while at the same time we know that two in three readers will not see it. Categories and navboxes are the things at the bottom. Most users rarely go past the lead. So I'd say there is some importance difference. I'm not strongly opposed to "the hack" – I'd simply like to see a better solution. Use different indicators - find better icons? Use icon+text on desktop, icon alone on mobile? Ponor (talk) 16:10, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Topicons aren't shown on mobile because it's a difficult implementation and because they're even more opaque to readers (see phabricator:T75299#10512584): on desktop, {{featured article}} at least benefits its readers with the tooltip "This is a featured article. Click here for more information", but touchscreens don't get tooltips. The tagline isn't shown on Minerva either, but it's probably a much simpler implementation and hasn't been done simply as a screen real estate saving measure. If we can get the tagline shown (phabricator:T349117), it'd serve the same purpose as the tooltip serves for desktop users. I do want mobile users to see this, and I think using the tagline is an important first step to getting WMF to increase visibility. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 16:19, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  You cannot see indicators on mobile either. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:37, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose What is the point? FAs and GAs are not necessarily better than normal articles, and the reader does not care about who followed internal Wikiprocedures to get something declared FA/GA. Also per Ahecht. Polygnotus (talk) 03:36, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  While you are technically correct that some articles which haven't been formally reviewed are as good as GAs or FAs, the average GA is certainly better than the average article, which is a stub or not much more. Toadspike [Talk] 07:58, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Toadspike The best kind of correct! Polygnotus (talk) 09:12, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  They have necessarily underwent quality control, which includes things like "checking whether the sources confirm what the article say"- not exactly obscure, Wikipedia-only procedures. Dege31 (talk) 16:33, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support as an idea. If the current technical implementation is insufficient, then it can still be recognised as something the community supports and perhaps be added at a later point. Even if that is not likely to happen any time soon given other technical priorities, it would be better having than having another RFC every time someone comes up with another way to make FAs/GAs more visible.  novov talk edits 08:26, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  I agree with the idea that consensus and technical details should be separate. The closer should feel free to find clear consensus that the community wants this (because they do). Then a consultation with a WMF dev good at performance and caching (maybe via a Phab ticket tagged #performance_issue and pinging someone like Krinkle?) and/or a trial should probably be encouraged in the close as a next step, but can leave that part vague / not as strong as the community consensus part. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:10, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose hacking a module in to the tagline for every single page is a poor technical implementation, especially for something that is only needed on an extreme minority of pages. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:29, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  Also oppose conceptually using the tagline for this purpose; work was already spent on indicators and if wanted I'd prefer improvement to indicators. Indicators are also much more consistent across the Wikipedia's in other languages. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:32, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  The French, German, and Russian Wikipedias all use different icons (from us and from each other). Of the Wikipedias I regularly visit only Chinese and Norwegian use the same icons we do. Smaller wikis like Alemannisch don't have quality ratings at all. Toadspike [Talk] 13:20, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

  I wonder if it's possible to add code to {{good article}}, {{featured list}} and {{featured article}} that changes the tagline. Cremastra (talk) 14:59, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  That was my original thought too and I asked the same thing at the idea lab. The MediaWiki extension mw:Extension:CustomSubtitle could allow this with {{#subtitle:A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured articles (linked from tagline)|featured article]]'' from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia}}, but the extension is in beta and hasn't been touched in years. It seems like it uses a deprecated function global $wgOut so would need to be updated. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 15:13, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  Additional oppose reason, as others have called out already, this will not solve the problem of casual readers (who increasingly use minerva) not seeing the rating - as the tagline element isn't even shown on that skin. I'd rather see indicator support added to minerva. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:54, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support A tagline seems much more understandable than cryptic and tiny symbols that we use today. If this proposal passes, I would support the removal of original topicons, as they will be made redundant. I don't know how feasible it is, but I would like WMF develop a way to show the taglines in the minerva skin as well. Ca ^{talk to me!} 15:40, 9 July 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose The tagline is there to provide credit to Wikipedia, not provide extra information such as an assessment from a niche rating project that the vast majority of Wikipedia readers and editors don't participate in. I don't think we should be adding overhead to every single page, including non-article pages, just for increasing the visibility of page status. Not to mention that, to those not familiar with our lingo, "A good article from Wikipedia" sounds incredibly hokey, if not conceited.--Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 15:53, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  And what will the readers do with this information? Nothing. Polygnotus (talk) 15:56, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  They're assured that the article has been reviewed. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:20, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  A previous version of the article was reviewed. NebY (talk) 16:51, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Aaron Liu That is not how they will interpret that, but even if it was, what will the readers do with this information? Nothing. Polygnotus (talk) 00:08, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  It's like the opposite of the unofficial secondary purpose of maintenance tags. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:59, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Aaron Liu You lost me. I am assuming the unofficial secondary purpose of maintenance tags is to give the tagger the feeling they did something useful. Polygnotus (talk) 01:03, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  It's to inform that there is (more likely to be) a problem with an extract from an article. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:07, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  That sounds like its the official primary purpose. Polygnotus (talk) 02:03, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  This is a very controversial opinion. The question of whether cleanup templates' visibility to readers is in conflict with the WP:NODISCLAIMERS philosophy has been a battle on here since the beginning. The official primary purpose, a little fiction we tell ourselves to resolve this, is to categorize articles and flag areas for other editors. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 02:12, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Dan Leonard to inform that there is (more likely to be) a problem with an extract from an article doesn't specify who gets informed, it might be the readers or editors or both. Polygnotus (talk) 02:26, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  I'm just explaining Aaron's comment, which I saw as a joke referencing the TfD battles over cleanup templates and the official policy that they aren't for informing readers. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 02:31, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Ah. Well I am mostly asleep so any jokes will go over my head. Polygnotus (talk) 02:35, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  I meant "inform readers" lol. Dan is correct in what I'm talking about, but I did have a point with my joke though in that the tagline would have the inverse purpose. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:39, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Readers should absolutely be paying attention to an article's assessed GA/FA status. The fact that something underwent (in the case of FAs) a rigorous review process is a key piece of information as a reader decides to what extent to trust an article (and yes, in an ideal world they'd be verifying everything, but in practice doing that rigorously would take nearly as long as writing the article). It's something we pay attention to even when just reading an article we do not intend to edit. And it's therefore something we should make noticeable enough to readers that they can do the name. Sdkb ^talk 23:30, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Sdkb I think one of the major weaknesses and strengths on Wikipedia is that the writers are completely clueless about the readers. should absolutely be paying attention to an article's assessed GA/FA status. No, of course not. It means only that someone jumped through some hoops. a reader decides to what extent to trust an article In my experience, people don't work like that. it's therefore something we should make noticeable enough to readers that they can do the name. Why should we tell a reader information that is not helpful to them and that they do not know how to interpret. Doesn't make sense to me. Polygnotus (talk) 00:13, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  GA/FA statuses only reflect the quality of an article at the time it was reviewed. Some (most?) of the articles with GA/FA status haven't been reassessed in several years or have undergone so many changes since achieving their status that their current quality differs significantly from when they were first reviewed. J.K. Rowling, a "Featured article" (which apparently means that it's "[one] of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer"), currently has two large templates on the article, one of which indicates that it has neutrality issues. So again, these article ratings are subjective, and readers do not need to be paying attention to them any more than they need to. Some1 (talk) 00:31, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  You're conveniently omitting that there is currently an effort to delist the Rowling article. Which illustrates exactly how it should be working: Quality articles that no longer meet standards should be reassessed. Sdkb ^talk 02:42, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  The J.K. Rowling discussion has been opened for almost a month now (and who knows how long it'll take for that discussion to close), and in the meantime, that FA status is there, misleading readers into thinking the article is still "one of Wikipedia's very best works" despite multiple experienced editors arguing that the article should be delisted. Some1 (talk) 03:31, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  And plenty of others arguing that it should remain listed (and those editors are arguing that the aforementioned maintenance tags were added in an effort to try to get it delisted). I take no position on whether it should or should not remain an FA, but the active discussion around it, as the example you chose, contradicts the notion that FAs are listed and then never looked at/reevaluated again. People who watch them periodically send them to FAR, and WP:URFA/2020 has been going through every single one systemically. Of course, as in most areas of the encyclopedia, we don't have the editor capacity to monitor everything as closely as we wish, but that's no reason to give up on the project or minimize the value it provides to readers — if they know about it. Sdkb ^talk 17:40, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Hence the giant neutrality tag on the top of the article. It's just like a "Disputed" inline tag right after a claim, and here the claim is that this is once of Wikipedia's very best works. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:43, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  As an editor who has provided a very critical review, I’m not concerned about the time the review has been active. It has been Featured for several years in roughly the same state. A month is pretty normal and I expect it’ll be moved to FARC soon (I’m going to post a follow up review tomorrow, which is how the process works). The moment we start speeding up the process of delisting, you will see (for example) large swathes of gender related content beset by meaningless and inaction able critiques to force delistings. WP:There is no rush. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 09:16, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  All the common slogans of Wikipedia sound incredibly hokey, if not conceited, to those who are opposed to wikis, the free knowledge movement, ... even the tagline itself, what if someone thinks "no such thing as a free lunch!", we have pages explaining free as in libre vs free as in gratis! This is just a walking on eggshells mentality which is not productive. Dege31 (talk) 16:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  If it's for providing credit, it should say "from Wikipedia contributors", given that Wikipedia/WMF don't own the copyright of article content. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 16:39, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't see how either the FA or GA process is niche. If you were talking about WP:ACLASS, then sure, that would be truly niche. But almost 1% of all articles are already either FAs or GAs. As long as it links to the actual WP:FA and WP:GA pages, it isn't any more niche than the topicons already there, which I'd argue are even more cryptic to the casual reader. Epicgenius (talk) 18:16, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  Less than 1% is pretty niche. How many Wikipedia articles would you have to read to have a 50:50 chance of stumbling on one of the 0.76% that are GA, FA, or FL? NebY (talk) 18:34, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  But GAs and FAs are some of the most-frequented articles that readers are likely to bump into. They're not randomly distributed. Cremastra (talk) 18:56, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  From Wikipedia:Popular pages § Top-100 list, quite a few of our most-viewed articles are GA or FA:

More information Rank, Class ...

Rank	Class	Page	Views in millions
		Main Page	46,800
		Special:Search	15,000
		Special:Random	7,900
		-	2,900
		Undefined	1,800
		United States Senate	350
		Special:Watchlist	344
		Special:Randompage	314
		YouTube	296
		Wiki	277
		Facebook	277
1		United States	254
2		Donald Trump	243
		Wikipedia	228
		404.php	225
		xHamster	212
		Portal:Current events	208
3		Elizabeth II	198
		Google	193
		Special:Book	185
		Special:CreateAccount	172
4		India	165
5		Barack Obama	161
		Search	153
		Bible	153
6		Cristiano Ronaldo	151
7		World War II	145
8		United Kingdom	144
9		Michael Jackson	142
		Wikipedia:Your first article	137
10		Elon Musk	135
		Special:RecentChanges	135
11		Sex	132
		Cleopatra	132
12		Lady Gaga	129
13		Adolf Hitler	129
14		Eminem	127
15		Lionel Messi	125
16		Game of Thrones	122
17		World War I	121
18		The Beatles	116
19		Justin Bieber	114
20		Canada	113
20		Freddie Mercury	113
22		Kim Kardashian	111
23		Johnny Depp	109
		Creative Commons Attribution	109
24		Steve Jobs	108
24		Dwayne Johnson	108
26		Michael Jordan	107
26		Australia	107
28		List of presidents of the United States	104
29		The Big Bang Theory	103
30		Taylor Swift	102
		Search engine	102
31		Stephen Hawking	101
31		List of highest-grossing films	101
33		China	100
		Portal:Contents	100
		XXXX	96
		Malware	96
34		Russia	96
34		New York City	96
34		Japan	96
34		Kanye West	96
38		List of Marvel Cinematic Universe films	95
38		Abraham Lincoln	95
40		LeBron James	94
40		Charles III	94
40		Darth Vader	94
40		Star Wars	94
40		Miley Cyrus	94
40		Germany	94
40		September 11 attacks	94
47		Leonardo DiCaprio	93
48		Kobe Bryant	92
48		Selena Gomez	92
50		Joe Biden	91
50		Tom Cruise	91
50		Rihanna	91
50		Albert Einstein	91
50		Academy Awards	91
55		Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh	90
55		Harry Potter	90
55		Elvis Presley	90
55		The Walking Dead (TV series)	90
59		Scarlett Johansson	89
59		Lil Wayne	89
59		Tupac Shakur	89
59		Angelina Jolie	89
63		Queen Victoria	88
63		Jeffrey Dahmer	88
65		John F. Kennedy	87
65		COVID-19 pandemic	87
67		Diana, Princess of Wales	86
67		Marilyn Monroe	86
69		Keanu Reeves	85
69		Arnold Schwarzenegger	85
69		How I Met Your Mother	85
69		Chernobyl disaster	85
69		France	85
69		Ariana Grande	85
75		Jennifer Aniston	84
75		Breaking Bad	84
77		Meghan, Duchess of Sussex	83
77		Muhammad Ali	83
77		Will Smith	83
80		Ted Bundy	82
80		Pablo Escobar	82
80		Mila Kunis	82
80		Vietnam War	82
80		Mark Zuckerberg	82
85		Manchester United F.C.	81
85		William Shakespeare	81
87		Titanic	80
87		Tom Brady	80
87		Jay-Z	80
87		Singapore	80
87		Earth	80
87		Bill Gates	80
		Wikipedia:Contact us	80
93		Winston Churchill	78
93		Bruce Lee	78
93		Nicki Minaj	78
93		Israel	78
97		Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon	77
97		John Cena	77
97		Charles Manson	77
97		Ryan Reynolds	77
97		Brad Pitt	77
97		Vladimir Putin	77

Close

• Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 18:58, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks - more than I was guessing! NebY (talk) 19:01, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support per above; I have an extension installed which does practically the same thing. To partially address the concerns some users have about the taglines being potentially misleading b/c the GA/FA is super old, the extension says Currently undergoing review of its featured status etc when articles get re-reviewed. ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 04:21, 10 July 2025 (UTC)
  • Upon rereading the discussion, perhaps that might be too much for the average Joe, but it was a nice thought while it lasted. ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 04:23, 10 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support It took me ages to find the tagline. I'd never noticed it, but support anything that lets our readers get more of a sense of relative fidelity of Wikipedia articles. A good thing that the GAR process is alive and kicking: we've been able to remove the icon from the 'worst' articles in recent years. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:32, 10 July 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose. We should not be misleading readers into thinking that the article rating is objective or meaningful when it is neither. Thryduulf (talk) 08:19, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Ouch. Cremastra (talk) 14:48, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Are you arguing the average featured article is not better than the average article? Because that's what article ratings having "no meaning" would mean. The reality is the opposite. The average featured article is way way better. IAWW (talk) 15:29, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  @It is a wonderful world by what objective measure is the comparison being made? What is the definition of an "average article" and an "average featured article"? The median-length featured article is definitely going to be longer than the median-length non-featured article but length alone is not a reliable indicator of anything other than length (e.g. an article that is two thirds reactions from random celebrities on Twitter is worse than an article one third its length that is purely encyclopaedic). Article ratings are meaningless in that they do not reliably convey to the reader any information about the quality of the current state of the article. Even a featured article rating simply says that someone put a lot of effort into satisfying a small number of other people that they put a lot of effort into the article at some point in the past. There is no requirement for writers or reviewers to be subject matter experts so there is no guarantee it is any more or less accurate than any other cited article. Ratings other than featured are worth less than the paper they are written on. Thryduulf (talk) 17:16, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  If there's a non-featured article whose quality is better than a featured article, that article should be made a featured article. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:45, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  That assumes that the current version of every featured article is of sufficient standard to be regarded as one of Wikipedia's best, that is simply not true. If you think the effort in getting a rubber stamp of approval from a self-selecting group of non-experts is worth the time it takes, good on you, but that doesn't make the rubber stamp meaningful to readers. Thryduulf (talk) 19:10, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  If an article does not meet the standards, you can be the one to delist it. The great bulk of articles do not meet Feature quality standards, therefore articles that do are in fact among the best. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:49, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  It doesn't matter what objective measure you use. Any measure which tries its best to rigorously define the heuristic concept of article quality will show featured articles are better than non-featured articles in 99% of cases. You can see this by picking random featured articles and random non-featured articles – seriously, just go and try it right now! You don't need to rigorously define "average" and "objective measure" or any other words to see this. IAWW (talk) 17:50, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Any measure which tries its best to rigorously define the heuristic concept of article quality will show featured articles are better than non-featured articles in 99% of cases. citation needed. Thryduulf (talk) 19:07, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  The sentence after: "you can see this by picking random featured articles and random non-featured articles" – go try it IAWW (talk) 19:16, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Without some measure which tries its best to rigorously define the heuristic concept of article quality I cannot. Thryduulf (talk) 19:17, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  If there is no objective measure you can think of (though I'm sure there is), your claim would be unfalsifiable. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:34, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Eh? I'm not the one claiming that the average featured article is better than the average article (that's @It is a wonderful world's claim). Thryduulf (talk) 19:44, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v3i1.13959 empirically derived features of FAs from FAC discussions, and for two articles I've tried it seems to work. Regardless, Wond's claim did not say the measures have to be objective; that's what you introduced. To see whether an article has better quality, we only need to agree in our judgement, no matter whether it is based on subjective criteria or objective criteria. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:53, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Reading the abstract of that 2009 study (I don't have time to read more), it seems to only show that articles that were awarded featured status reliably contained the features the FAC process looked for - which is unsurprising, not really relevant to this discussion, says nothing about whether those features do indicate quality (if the featured article criteria required every featured article to contain a sentence about the colour red and every featured article did contain such a sentence, that would indicate that the FAC process is following its own rules, but wouldn't say anything about the article quality) and may or may not still hold true nearly 15 years later.

  To see whether an article has better quality, we only need to agree in our judgement, no matter whether it is based on subjective criteria or objective criteria. true, but no criteria (objective or subjective) were specified let alone agreed - I asked what objective criteria were being used to back up the claim (and still haven't got an answer) because while we could agree to use subjective criteria to verify the claim I do not agree that such would be both relevant and meaningful. Also, it's worth pointing out that putting the article status in the tag line is not agreeing anything with anybody, or telling anybody anything about the average Wikipedia article. It is claiming that this version of this article is an example of Wikipedia's best work. That is not reliably true. Thryduulf (talk) 20:47, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Fair point. I still maintain that you should use whatever subjective criteria you should stand behind, but ORES scores also show quality. I strongly disagree that subjective criteria are meaningless. I'm sure we all know the meaning in having "good" article quality, and that is of course subjective. It is meaningless to ask for objective assessments of something being better if we can agree using other criteria that something is better much faster, especially when the selection of such "objective" criteria is, in itself, subjective. All I'm saying is the near-tautology of subjective assessments being able to produce the subjective assessment of "good quality", while you're saying that only objective assessments will suffice, an unfalsifiable claim if you cannot provide an objective measure.
  The topic of "this version" is being discussed elsewhere in this RfC. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:33, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  I'm sympathetic to your main argument, that labeling articles at some point in time is incompatible with the wiki model. But I think your comments rubber stamp of approval from a self-selecting group of non-experts, even GA only requires that citations exist, an article that is two thirds reactions from random celebrities on Twitter is worse than an article one third its length that is purely encyclopaedic, and ratings other than featured are worth less than the paper they are written on are very dismissive of the work content reviewers do and I don't think you should be surprised you're getting piled on here over them. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 19:54, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  What pile on? It's about even in terms of people who (broadly) agree with me and people who (broadly) disagree. The final statement you quote from me is entirely a matter of opinion, we can agree to disagree regarding that. The quote about reactions relates only to article length not being a reliable metric of quality, I don't understand why you think that is dismissive of the work of content reviewers unless they do regard length as a reliable indicator of article quality? (If they do, that's definitely a black mark for the process).

  The first two are factual statements. Thryduulf (talk) 20:32, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  By calling the result a "rubber stamp", the first one is an opinion. For the claim to be factual, you would need to show FAC does not disagree with its insiders, which is verily false. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:34, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  I'm really disheartened by the comments decrying the content review process here. IAWW's review of an article I wrote was one of the most enjoyable editing experiences I've had on here, and it was very comprehensive and involved a text-source integrity check. Reducing his work to a rubber-stamp without citation checks is insulting. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 20:30, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  There are GA reviews like that, but there are also GA reviews like Talk:I-No/GA1. As Stepwise stated below, promoting articles to GA status only requires one person's approval. Some1 (talk) 20:40, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Is there a problem with the subject article that makes you think the review was conducted improperly? It obviously has fewer BLP and political considerations than the one I cited so the prose does not need to be checked as closely. Regardless, it still gets a topicon with a "this is a good article" tooltip so I don't see why the modified tagline would be so extreme an addition. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 20:51, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  This is a little off topic, but @Some1, what makes you think that review you linked was not conducted properly? IAWW (talk) 22:47, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't believe the review was conducted "improperly", but find the differences in the lengths and comprehensiveness of the two GA reviews quite jarring. Some1 (talk) 23:21, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  The first two are factual statements Ha ha. No they aren't. I'm not sure why you're taking this opportunity to complain about editors who want quality articles, but your second statements is clearly false. Perhaps you should look at the GA criteria, which are loose but set a baseline of acceptable quality content, before making clearly and egregiously incorrect statements, which at this point is approaching disinformation. Cremastra (talk) 01:22, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Discussion elsewhere has identified that the GA criteria I was reading and the GA criteria that are actually applied are different, so while I thought that was factual it turns out that it wasn't. The first is though.

  I'm not complaining about editors wanting quality content - far from it - what I'm saying is that article rating labels are not a reliable guide to the quality of the current version of an article. I'm also saying that the FA and GA criteria used to award those labels are not a guarantee that the version of the article reviewed is one of Wikipedia's best, just that it meets those criteria. If you think that is an attack on editors then you haven't been reading what I've actually written. Thryduulf (talk) 01:35, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I mean, the GA criteria excerpts the part from the "how the GA criteria should be applied" guideline on spot checks being minimum, so you could say it is in the GA criteria you were reading. That is an interesting state of affairs indeed. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:01, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  If the GA criteria as written differ from the GA criteria as applied in practice, then we definitely shouldn't be proclaiming GA status in the tagline. Overloading the ordinary word "good" with an insider meaning is confusing enough. Expecting that people will read a set of criteria and then a further guideline to figure out what "good" is supposed to mean is... not really practical. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 18:41, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Again, the relevant part of that guideline is quoted in the set of criteria. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:07, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Maybe you know that that's the only relevant part of that guideline. Maybe someone would figure that out after reading both. But it's not at all clear. Every time a reader has to investigate a behind-the-scenes Wikipedia page to understand what something means, we've failed. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:52, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  We have explanatory essays that go in depth on the specific meanings of everything. That does not undermine the meaning of what is explained at all. The criteria by itself sufficiently explain what is expected of GoodArticles. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:00, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  They don't differ, criteria 2 definitely requires sources verify the text. I don't follow the claim that there's a discrepancy here. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 20:08, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  That's a pretty serious claim you're making. Do you have any objective evidence that the process is this fundamentally useless? None of the criteria for good and featured articles, after all, are not length, so if they don't measure anything else, that's pretty serious. You think the process is so bad that even checking the sources doesn't increase the average accuracy, that it's just a rubber stamp? This all sounds pretty unbelievable to me, but maybe I'm wrong. If this is all true, why do you think the average participant of this RfC is ignorant of it? Dege31 (talk) 17:57, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  I do not have evidence for a claim I am not making. Checking the cited sources do verify the content they claim to verify is extremely valuable but only a small part of what is required to get the FA badge, not required for any other rating (even GA only requires that citations exist) [see later discussion, it turns out the documented GA criteria I based that comment on do not match the GA criteria that are actually applied. Thryduulf (talk) 01:42, 11 July 2025 (UTC)], and something that can be done completely independently of the FA process. My claim is that FA status does not reliably communicate anything useful to readers about the current version of the article. The current version of the article might be better than average, even one of Wikipedia's best, but it might even be below average now. Thryduulf (talk) 19:16, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  That's no longer true. Funnily, the new GA checks are in some sense more strict that the FA criteria on WP:TSI. All GANs require spot checks (since 2023 or so), whereas only newer FA nominators have their articles spot checked. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:27, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  That's not what is written at WP:GACR6. Thryduulf (talk) 20:56, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Well in practice, spot checks are expected. See the guideline Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles#Assessing the article and providing a review. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:04, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  I'm sure the GA criteria used to include that a spot check was required. Did this get removed? IAWW (talk) 21:06, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  That's good to know, but if we can't even reliably communicate what the GA criteria actually are to editors who know that "good article" is jargon then it is even less useful information for readers than I previously thought it was. Thryduulf (talk) 21:16, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  The proposed destination for the modified tagline is Wikipedia:Good articles, which states (emphasis mine)

  A good article (GA) is a Wikipedia article that meets a core set of editorial standards, the good article criteria, passing through the good article nomination process successfully. They are well-written, contain factually accurate and verifiable information, are broad in coverage, neutral in point of view, stable, and illustrated, where possible, by relevant images with suitable copyright licenses.

  Also, I think you may have missed footnote 3 in WP:GACR6, which states "at a minimum, check that the sources used are reliable ... and that those you can access support the content of the article". I think these adequately explain to readers that a good article has had its sources checked for verifiability. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 21:23, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  Right, I see what you mean now. I understand the concern, but personally, with the (re)activation of the good & featured article review process, I don't personally think it's as critical. Would you also support removing the good article and featured article topicons, by the same logic? Dege31 (talk) 23:03, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  It's not something that bothers me enough to propose myself, especially as some people seem rather attached to them, but I would probably support if someone else were to propose it. Thryduulf (talk) 23:08, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Thryduulf: even GA only requires that citations exist please strike this factually incorrect statement. Cremastra (talk) 01:23, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I've struck with a note as it's slightly more complicated than simply being incorrect, see discussion subsquent to my comment about why I made that statement. Thryduulf (talk) 01:42, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you. Cremastra (talk) 01:57, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  There is no requirement for writers or reviewers to be subject matter experts so there is no guarantee it is any more or less accurate than any other cited article. Yes, exactly. Schizophrenia is a Featured Article with almost 4k edits since its FA review back on May 2, 2011 (14 years ago). Who knows if that article is still accurate or up-to-date, but because of its FA status, readers will blindly trust that the article and its content are accurate. Some1 (talk) 18:39, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I mean WP:MEDRS the policy is pretty good at tackling that exact problem^{Superscript text} Aaron Liu (talk) 19:08, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose Per Thryduulf - GA particularly has little to do with quality and is more of an Wikipedia:Esperanza-like process to promote the participants. The GA talkpage currently has an RFC to enforce Quid pro Quo reviewing of articles and to reduce the standard of reviews. GA reviews are in many cases completely subjective and amount to little more than "I like this" or "I don't like this".Nigel Ish (talk) 17:23, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  It is a bit subjective, yes, but there are detailed criteria on how articles should be evaluated for GA. GAs that don't meet the criteria go through GAR. The linked "reduce the standard of reviews" discussion is not about reducing the standard of reviews but about reviewers who make additional comments beyond the standard of the reviews. And the quid prop quo proposal RfC is currently met with a swarm of opposition. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:48, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  At this point this discussion discussion has devolved into GA-bashing by people who apparently don't want any kind of quality control and for who any recognition of hard work is evidence of a social clique. Cremastra (talk) 01:18, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  This user specifically seems to have an axe to grind against the GA process: see their userpage. Cremastra (talk) 05:18, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  As a post I made is linked here, I feel obligated to comment that this is a misrepresentation of what I said. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 03:42, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

• I don't think I'd ever noticed the tagline before, but I've definitely seen the topicons. The fact that they're coloured images makes them more noticeable than small italics, but having linked text in the tagline would probably cover some of that deficit. Maybe I've overestimating the readers, but because "good article" doesn't have a standard colloquial meaning, I think that if a reader did notice that the tagline said that, there wouldn't be any standard meaning to assume. If they wanted to know what it meant, they might click the link and learn more about the internal processes of the encyclopedia. If they didn't, they wouldn't walk away with any wrong assumptions. "Featured article" is a little different - assumptions could be made - but the meaning could vary wildly. Maybe this so-called "featured" article was chosen at random somehow to feature on the main page at some point in the past. I think the topicons make the meaning clearer, appearing to be badges the article has achieved somehow, but I don't think the additional text in the tagline would harm the project (outside of potential technical burden). 207.11.240.2 (talk) 08:59, 10 July 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose - because as written, the tagline is misleading. For instance, the first example listed: London Beer Flood. When you go to the talk page, it is clearly tagged as: London Beer Flood is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. So it is misleading to imply to our readers that the current version they are reading is the FA version. Isaidnoway (talk) 18:28, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  I think that'd be a good thing. If an article's current state is incongruent with what one expects from being "one of the best articles", readers would be alerted to raise the issues somewhere. This can help ensure quality within FAs. Also, <pedantic>, the banner you quoted says the article or a previous version met the definition, and that the article is a featured article, not that it might be a previous version that is the featured article instead of the current version. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:00, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  No, what it means is that the FA article could be the current form or an earlier, possibly different, iteration of the article could be the FA. For instance, Michael Jackson was promoted to FA status 17 years ago, and on July 8, 2025, there was a brief edit war over a cleanup tag placed in a section. The article had 16,000+ pageviews that day, so how many readers (hundreds, thousands) read a version (current version) that didn't meet the criteria for a FA, and we shouldn't expect for our readers to try and hunt for a previous version that actually meets the FA criteria. I mean, if we are going to say to our readers with a tagline - the current version you are reading meets the criteria for a FA, but yet editors are squabbling over content that may not reflect what the cited sources actually say, then yeah, go ahead with a misleading tagline. Isaidnoway (talk) 23:54, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

  The article was still designated FA. The definition of FA is that the article or a previous version was reviewed and met criteria, not necessarily the current version even if the FA-designation is the status quo. I'm not saying we should expect our readers to hunt for that previous version; I'm saying that increasing this prominence invites readers who realize the incongruence to challenge. I don't see how the cleanup tag changes anything in your argument's favor here. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:47, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  invites readers who realize the incongruence to challenge the vast majority of readers will not recognise the incongruence, but will blindly trust that an article that proclaims to be top quality is top quality, even if it contains blatant misinformation. Even editors with years of experience working with featured articles will not always see an incongruence for topics (or even topic areas) they are not familiar with. Thryduulf (talk) 00:55, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Not if there's a giant orange banner. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:56, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Sorry I missed this reply earlier, but I'm struggling to understand what relevance a banner has to anything in my comment? Thryduulf (talk) 18:58, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  It's alright. I was referring to maintenance tags. If the maintenance tags that are about eight times larger than the tagline (on desktop; on mobile it's probably gonna be like 3x) and colored in alarming ways say the article contains misinformation, the reader will believe the article contains misinformation over the tagline that says "featured article". Aaron Liu (talk) 19:15, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  True, but only a very small portion of current revisions (at the time any given reader loads the article) of good or featured articles that are not of that quality (due to vandalism, gradual degradation, changing standards, link rot, POV-pushing, real-world changes, editing disputes, etc, etc, etc) have maintenance tags. Thryduulf (talk) 20:25, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  I guess that's where we diverge. I have not seen any GA/FAs that have problems untagged for a significant amount of time. Would you give me a post-Coldwell example? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:33, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't know what you mean by "post-Coldwell" but see everything just before it was sent to FAR/GAR, every vandalised revision, etc. It doesn't matter how long the page is below the standard, it matters that whenever someone views a revision that is below standard (for whatever reason) the tag would be misleading. Sometimes only in a very minor way, other times in extremely major ways and of course everything in between. Thryduulf (talk) 10:09, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

  You have a point. Still, I think this deserves a trial to see if the increased visibility will bring more articles to maintenance categories or GAR and thus counter the issue you describe. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:59, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

  The article had 16,000+ pageviews that day, so how many readers (hundreds, thousands) read a version (current version) that didn't meet the criteria for a FA - Kind of beside the point, but an article doesn't automatically change from "FA quality" to "not FA quality" just because there's a tag (and similarly for GA). Instead it's usually one of two situations:

  1. The tag was justified, and therefore the article was already not up to FA/GA standard beforehand. It can be resolved, or the article brought to WP:FAR/WP:GAR if issues are pervasive enough.
  2. The tag was not justified, nd therefore it changes nothing about the article's rating.

  Though, I can't argue with the fact that the current version of an article that previously passed an FAC or a GAN may not necessarily be up to standard. That's why substandard articles are (and should be) listed at FAR or GAR. Epicgenius (talk) 03:43, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  On MJ's article, if you or I ran across the maintenance tag, sure, we would know it could be either one of the two situations you listed, but would our readers? If this prominent tagline had been in place on MJ, bragging about this is one of our very best articles, and a reader scrolls down to a section that is tagged with - the content you are about to read may not reflect what the cited sources actually say, they are going to walk away scratching their heads, thinking, this is their very best? Of course, this situation would hold true with the FA icon already present, but I just don't see how adding this prominent tagline (more bragging) is a benefit to our readers, when it has the potential to be misleading. It's bad enough these unnecessary icons are already on the page. Isaidnoway (talk) 06:50, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose, per a combination of Ahecht's arguments (scope creep: rating is not what the tagline is for; and "a good article from Wikipedia" sounds bizarre for everybody not familiar with the technical meaning) and Thryduulf's (rating status is far too unreliable for such a highlighting to be responsible). I may add that both arguments apply particularly strongly to "good articles", for which I would oppose this proposal very strongly. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:20, 10 July 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per Future Perfect at Sunrise. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 23:31, 10 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support - clearly sensible, not least as readers on mobiles do not get to see the FA or GA icons. Whatever the merits or demerits of the GAN and FAC procedures, these articles do have a defined level of quality and it's helpful for readers to know that. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:56, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Did you see above how readers on mobile also do not get to see the 'tagline'? — xaosflux ^Talk 09:25, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  these articles do have a defined level of quality. No they don't. A previous version of the article was assess as having a defined level of quality, but there is no guarantee that the version of the article the tagline is displayed on bears any resemblance to that version. Thryduulf (talk) 09:53, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  This is just one of the things where Wikipedia works better in practice than in theory. "There is no guarantee that any of this is true" is correct for all of Wikipedia, yet it is highly trusted and extremely widely used. —Kusma (talk) 10:11, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Indeed, but that's completely different to a prominent banner saying "this is our best work" with links saying that our best work has been verified etc, being placed on articles that are anything but our best work. While many people seeing a page that has been very obviously vandalised will realise that it has been vandalised, not everybody will and the more subtle the vandalism (or POV pushing, etc) the fewer people will know not to take the statement at face value. Doubly so if the article's POV has been slanted towards a POV the reader happens to share. Thryduulf (talk) 10:26, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Thryduulf, I think you overestimate the amount of change that quality articles, especially FAs, see after their review. Ovalipes catharus has some small additions of references and phrasing tweaks () since it was promoted in January. Malicious edits would be reverted, which leaves potentially problematic edits down to POV-pushing, addition of inaccurate information, and bad writing. These would probably all be caught by the person who brought it to FA in the first place. Cremastra (talk) 15:00, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  All those mallicious edits, etc were current revisions before reversion. The person who brought it to FA is not watching it 24/7. Also, changes accumulate over time God of War III was promoted to FA in February 2015, it has since undergone significant changes. Is it still FA quality? I have absolutely no idea. Do I trust a 10-year-old rating? if yes, then it's misleading if I happen to have viewed it one of the many reverted revisions was current. If no, then it's pointless. Thryduulf (talk) 15:48, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  GAs can see many changes: Western Roman Empire 527 intermediate revisions by more than 100 users so far; Catilinarian conspiracy 68 by 39; Biblical Hebrew 791 by more than 100. FAs too: Ethiopian historiography 192 by >100; Eagle (British comics) 323 by >100; John Lennon >3000 since being TFA on 8 Dec 2010 (apologies if I've missed any intervening reviews). NebY (talk) 15:50, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Taylor Swift has almost 10,000 intermediate revisions since its promotion to FA status back on October 31, 2016 (9 years ago), and there are complaints on the article's talk page that the article is a mess, outdated, and "completely bloated." Some1 (talk) 18:55, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Well, yeah, these intervening 9 years count for almost half of Taylor Swift's career. I wouldn't expect any article, let alone Swift's article, to remain unchanged in that time period.

  As for the article being bloated and outdated, that is less relevant to the topic currently at hand (mentioning FA status in the tagline) and more like a WP:FAR issue. – Epicgenius (talk) 19:58, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  The fact that there are complaints about the featured article(s) just illustrates that these article ratings are subjective, provide little meaningful information to readers, and don't need to be given more prominence (and in this case, by modifying taglines, of all things). Some1 (talk) 20:17, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't see how. It simply makes them wiki articles just as mistakes make us human. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:47, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  these article ratings are subjective,
  There are literally objective criteria (WP:GACR, WP:FACR) that are used to evaluate articles for GA or FA status. So no, it isn't a subjective rating.

  The fact that there are complaints about the article just mean that people have opinions. These may indicate that the article doesn't meet the criteria. They may also be unjustified, however, as Dan Leonard indicates below. – Epicgenius (talk) 21:51, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  That recent complaint from an unregistered editor is plainly false (the masters buyback is covered in the lead with a link to Taylor Swift masters dispute and extensively in § 2018–2021: Lover, Folklore, and Evermore). I get that FAs sometimes get delisted but choosing one with a drive-by nonsense complaint isn't a very good argument. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 20:22, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I think it's fallacious to imply that just because an article has reached GA or FA status, it shouldn't undergo changes. It's one thing for an article to be modified significantly after its promotion to FA or GA status. Sometimes, this is even required in order for an article to keep its rating, especially for articles about people who are alive or things that still exist.

  It's another thing entirely for these changes to have significantly degraded the quality of the article, but even a small number of changes by a small number of editors can degrade an article's quality. In short, quantity of changes != quality of changes. – Epicgenius (talk) 16:27, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Whatever fallaciousness you might infer, I was not implying that just because an article has reached GA or FA status, it shouldn't undergo changes. I was responding to I think you overestimate the amount of change, began by saying many changes, and didn't discuss their quality or materiality. NebY (talk) 16:50, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Whatever fallaciousness you might infer, I was not implying that just because an article has reached GA or FA status, it shouldn't undergo changes.
  If I was mis-attributing that to you, then I apologize. I was speaking primarily in the context of Thryduulf's comment; they claimed that there is no guarantee that the version of the article the tagline is displayed on bears any resemblance to that version. Which may very well be true, but that comment also implied that articles have to remain more-or-less static after their promotion, which is not the case.

  I was replying to your comment about the number of changes to selected GAs/FAs because I was trying to convey the fact that a large number of changes may not necessarily be an indicator of an article's decline in quality. It can be an indication of such a deterioration of quality, but this can also be done by one or few editors who remove large parts of an article. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:19, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I wasn't saying that articles have to remain more-or-less static after promotion, and I'm not sure how you read that into my comment. I'm simply saying that because articles are not static, a previous version being assigned a quality rating is not a reliable indicator of the current quality of the article. It might be that there have been a thousand changes but no material change, it could be that there have been ten changes and the article is substantially different (which could mean it is worse, better or about the same quality). It is this changing nature that means the assessments are not a reliable indicator of the quality of the version displayed, so we should not be proclaiming that something is an example of our best work when we have absolutely no idea whether it is or isn't. Thryduulf (talk) 17:50, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support mildly increasing the visibility of our assessment processes. We should also strengthen GAR and FAR to ensure the designations remain meaningful. —Kusma (talk) 10:18, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  This seems to put the cart before the horse. Shouldn't we ensure that the designations mean something before we increase their visibility? Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 18:46, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I think they are meaningful. I am using the opportunity to assert that FAR and GAR are important in ensuring that the designations are meaningful. We do not have to improve all processes to perfection before considering something like the present proposal. —Kusma (talk) 19:37, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction The designations do mean something and always have. Cremastra (talk) 20:56, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose on the grounds that we shouldn't be shoving words that have specialized Wikipedian meanings in front of every reader. "Good" is a particularly bad word to use in this way. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 17:19, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Not only is the term "good article" overloading the ordinary word "good", but also, getting that status for an article really only requires the approval of one person. We shouldn't make that look more official than it is.

  I do not think this was intentional, but this proposal amounts to gratifying long-term editors at the cost of confusing readers. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 18:33, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  It also requires the article surviving challenges to the good article status and the reviewer being in good standing.

  Why not give it a try and see if readers are confused? A lot of people here doubt they will be. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:09, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  A similar number of people have made very strong arguments that readers will be confused and/or actively mislead. Why should we dismiss those concerns just because some experienced editors with detailed knowledge of the procedures vaugely hope that readers will understand that when shove jargon in their face they will understand both what it means and also that it might not actually mean that? Thryduulf (talk) 19:47, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Nobody is claiming readers will know right away what these terms mean, the idea is that they'll be clearer than the status quo of topicons. Czar's story in § Proposal 21: Make GA status more prominent in mainspace shows that readers currently don't understand what these icons mean and actually have serious misunderstandings. A plain-text phrase "good article" or "featured article", with a clear link to these meanings, will hopefully both alleviate confusion and onboard future contributors. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 20:14, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Another comment I somehow missed. If readers have serious misunderstandings about what the jargon means when it is tucked away in a corner and accompanied by a link and/or tooltip to an explanation, why would putting that same jargon front and centre not result in anything other than more readers with serious misunderstandings? Thryduulf (talk) 19:01, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  My complaint is not about the info being tucked away in a corner but about being obscured by an icon and a tooltip. Tooltip explanations are discouraged by most accessibility guidelines including our own because readers clearly aren’t hovering over them to learn what they mean. Replacing (or here, supplementing) icon-and-tooltip presentation with plaintext and a link is self-evidently clearer and less confusing. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 19:11, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  One reviewer "in good standing" is still just one reviewer. And "good standing" is one more thing that is not explained either at the criteria page, the instructions page, or the guideline (which is a different page than the instructions). Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:59, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  It's not a defined thing but empirical, basically the chances of such reviews ending up at GAR. It's not a real thing besides just having reviews that fit the criteria. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:04, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  "Good" is a pretty good description, better than "featured" but I think the link will be enough for people to cope. —Kusma (talk) 19:39, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  If "Good article" actually meant something similar to the non-jargon meaning of "this article is good" then you might have a point. So while I applaud your optimism the evidence of how readers currently interact with Wikipedia suggest to me that it is significantly misplaced. Thryduulf (talk) 19:50, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Many here that !voted support believe that good articles are good. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:05, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  That established Wikipedians can have a good faith disagreement about what the phrase "Good article" means is more than enough evidence that it will mislead some readers. Thryduulf (talk) 22:22, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  Is there a GoodArticle you think is not good? If so, you should nominate that article for Review after starting a discussion about it, no matter how much the article has changed since it was reviewed. By something approaching induction GoodArticles are therefore good articles. I think the only situation where the GoodArticle process fails to produce good articles is if you believe the criteria are not enough to ensure "good", in which case I'd like to know. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:31, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  My point is that in Wikipedia jargon "Good article" means that a specific revision of an article was judged by one person to meet a set of very specific criteria (that the current version of the article may or may not now meet). To most readers seeing a tagline saying "good article" would indicate that the version of the article has been assessed to be "good" and thus can be relied upon to be neutral, accurate, and at least reasonably comprehensive and thus by implication articles that are not "good" are "bad" and cannot be said to be poses any of those qualities. While it is true that the current version of many Good Articles is indeed good there are also current versions of Good Articles that are not good. There are also plenty of articles where the current version is accurate, neutral and comprehensive but which are not Good Articles simply because nobody has formally assessed it. Thryduulf (talk) 22:45, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I think we're going round in circles at this point. I made a similar reply at #c-Aaron_Liu-20250711004700-Isaidnoway-20250710235400.

  there are also current versions of Good Articles that are not good

  (besides what I say in the linked reply) Those are also very few.

  by implication articles that are not "good" are "bad"

  I don't think that's true. The rest are just unreviewed articles, and even not meeting the standard for good doesn't necessarily mean bad. I think this also addresses your last point. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:48, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

  As an editor familiar with the review process you know that "not good" doesn't mean "bad". The same is not true of the average reader who does not know that "Good article" is jargon, let alone what it means.

  Re current versions of Good Articles. If you mean stable versions then there probably are relatively few (but still a large number), however when you include every version that is current at some point it is much larger. There is no way for the casual reader to know whether the version they are seeing is the good version or the vandalised version. Thryduulf (talk) 02:41, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

  Sorry, I meant that I doubt that's what readers'll interpret it is. WIthout "good" it's still "articles".
  I mean at any moment. I don't think aggregating anyone that had any version that was bad is meaningful. And it's not like RC patrol's gone handicapped. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:47, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

  It does mean something similar, and I am indeed optimistic that our readers know that blue text means a link that can be clicked on to obtain clarification. Most of our readers are not using Wikipedia or the WWW for the first time. —Kusma (talk) 23:11, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

  I'd argue that "featured" is a less confusing term than "good" in this context, since it's less generic and actually conveys the connotation that the articles were selected via some process. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:55, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support a simple change to address a problem that has come up frequently. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:09, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

  What problem? Thryduulf (talk) 10:46, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

  Visibility of page status as addressed in the discussions listed at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Background_(tagline). Phlsph7 (talk) 13:36, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

  The proposal has indeed come up frequently. Some editors see increased visibility of article ratings as an improvement to the status quo, but if there is a problem with the status quo it is that it overstates the reliability and importance of article ratings, which is not something making them more prominent can solve (indeed rather the opposite). Thryduulf (talk) 17:26, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support as I like the idea of better signaling which of our articles have met a minimum bar for quality. GAs aren't perfect articles, but we show worse articles on the main page every day. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 20:03, 12 July 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose Unnecessary embellishment Logoshimpo (talk) 04:05, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

  An embellishment is defined as ornamental, or decorative detail, to make something more attractive. Is it to your belief that the good article, and featured article processes are likewise embellishments? Dege31 (talk) 01:54, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

  Yes Logoshimpo (talk) 05:07, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose unnecessary and potentially misleading use of wikipedia jargon.--Staberinde (talk) 09:31, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

  Could you clarify what you mean by 'unnecessary'? Dege31 (talk) 01:52, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

  There is no noteworthy problem that requires fixing here.--Staberinde (talk) 20:10, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

• Support – for the same reasons I proposed more prominent topicons in 2021. As Wikipedia matures, I think it's increasingly important we 1) focus on raising the quality of existing content and 2) help readers learn how to effectively use and understand the varying quality of articles, especially in the current information landscape. Drawing attention to the main ways we review articles, however flawed they are, is a step in the right direction for both these aims, and by raising awareness of peer review processes it might help improve them. I think it would be even better if the "featured article" or "good article" text linked directly to the article's most recent FAC/FAR/GAN, but perhaps that wouldn't be feasible. I understand the valid concerns about the varying quality of FA/GA status articles, but ultimately it is better than no review at all, I trust that most readers understand Wikipedia is not infallible, and the more we focus on peer reviews the better for raising quality and trust in the project. Jr8825 • Talk 12:26, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support ways to make GA/FA status more prominently visible, including this proposal. My preferred way of going about it would be to have the icon next to the article title, kind of like how (on desktop) the icon is displayed next to the name of another language in the "Languages" list if that version of the article is good or featured (see e.g. Jupiter). Several of the opposing comments sound more to me like arguments to abolish GA/FA (or at minimum the icons) entirely, which I am fairly certain is a proposition that would be overwhelmingly rejected by the community. TompaDompa (talk) 23:35, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

  To your point about opposing comments, I agree. Some of the oppose !votes bring up valid concerns, like Future Perfect at Sunrise's and Isaidnoway's comments that this tagline might not be appropriate for articles that actually need GAR or FAR. However, comments like "GA particularly has little to do with quality and is more of an Wikipedia:Esperanza-like process to promote the participants." and "Yes" (in response to a query about whether the respondent considered the GA/FA processes mere "embellishment") do seem to be rooted in opposition to the GA or FA processes, not to this specific proposal. – Epicgenius (talk) 01:54, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose, per several of the arguments made above. If this is intended to bring in more editor participants, we're sending a confusing signal to a group very few of whom are the right target. The terms are opaque and likely to be misleading to our readers, since there are plenty of GAs that are no longer good quality but have not been reassessed yet. Fewer FAs are in that state, but there are some. If the GAR and FAR processes were working as well as we'd like, this would be less of an issue, but we haven't solved that problem yet. Future Perfect at Sunrise puts the case against well. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:20, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
• Support trying this out, at least for some period. I believe Wikipedia should try to make GAs/FAs more visible to the common reader, and I think more awareness may also lead to more GAR and FAR helpers. ALittleClass (talk) 02:38, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose for "A good article from Wikipedia"; which implies that other articles are "not good". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:22, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  Would you feel differently, @Pigsonthewing, if we renamed GAs/FAs to something like "high-quality article" and "top-quality article"? Sdkb ^talk 15:09, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  That would imply that other articles are "not high quality", so no. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:15, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  Is there some other language we could rename GAs/FAs to to connote that they have undergone more thorough review and received a higher quality assessment than other articles, without implying that all our other articles are trash? I do think the concept of article quality assessments for articles should be fairly intuitive to most readers, Wikipedia being a work in progress and all that. Sdkb ^talk 15:25, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  The problem is that, at least as things currently stand, articles that there is a set of articles that have been assessed as being of a particular quality at some point in their history and a set of articles that are currently that standard of quality. The two sets overlap but are not close to being the same with both high quality articles that have not been assessed as such and articles that were formerly high quality no longer being. Unless and until the significant majority of articles tagged as being of "X" quality currently (at the time any given reader loads the page) are that quality and the significant majority of articles that are that quality are tagged as such any tagline will be inherently misleading in some way. Thryduulf (talk) 15:39, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  You could get around some of that by something that says something like like "on <date>, a <version> this article was assessed as being <quality standard>" with a link to that quality standard and an explanation that the current version may or may not be of that quality standard, but (a) that isn't a tagline, and (b) is not what is being proposed here. Thryduulf (talk) 15:42, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Part of our responsibility of editing the encyclopedia is to ensure that articles that should be FAs/GAs are nominated and that those designated as such but that no longer meet the standards are delisted. It's no different than having an article tagged as needing more citations: That tag was placed at a specific point in time, and represents our judgement at that time, but it doesn't imply that other articles don't also need more citations. And if, as the article evolves, it acquires enough citations, it's our responsibility to remove it. The articles tagged as needing more citations will never correspond precisely to those that actually do need more citations the most, but we still use the notice since it's a good enough (albeit imperfect) indicator. Ditto for quality article assessments. Sdkb ^talk 16:00, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  "Part of our responsibility of editing the encyclopedia is to ensure that articles that should be FAs/GAs are nominated..." No it isn't. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:22, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  It sounds like you do not support having the GA/FA system as an integral part of the encyclopedia. Sdkb ^talk 16:59, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  It isn't an integral part of the encyclopaedia, it's an optional status symbol. Just because that status symbol motivates some editors to improve articles doesn't make it integral - look at the countless articles that get improved in other ways and for other reasons. Thryduulf (talk) 17:20, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  I didn't say that; please read what I wrote. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:33, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That's true in the abstract, but this proposal is not good - indeed for the reasons explained in detail multiple times it's actually harmfully bad. The comparison to dated tags that specify in detail what the problem is/was and do not proclaim or imply anything about other articles misses the mark in multiple different ways. Thryduulf (talk) 17:16, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

  The German Wikipedia approaches this by putting de:Template:Exzellent at the bottom of pages with a notice "This article was added to the list of excellent articles on day (DD_MM_YYYY) in [permanent_link_to_version this version]. See today's featured article, de:Abreise König Wilhelms I. zur Armee am 31. Juli 1870. That also has serious downsides, for example de:J. R. R. Tolkien links to a version from 2004 that does not have a single inline citation and does not actually meet modern day standards. "The 2004 version of this article met the 2004 version of WP:FA?" is not particularly useful information. —Kusma (talk) 10:22, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

  The latter issue might be mitigated by only displaying the message if the article was promoted or had its status confirmed within the last N years. The German Wikipedia has (or at least had) a very different approach regarding inline citation to the English Wikipedia, so the status of articles is not trivially comparable between the languages. Thryduulf (talk) 10:39, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

  It does no such thing, especially since there is a link explaining what "good article" actually means. —Kusma (talk) 09:50, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  It might not do that to you, but it does to me and Andy and assuredly will to anyone who doesn't know that "good article" is jargon (regardless of whether there is or isn't a link). Thryduulf (talk) 09:54, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  I really don't think we have enough GAs or FAs that the absence of a "good article" tagline will be so widely noticed. I don't think the proposal will be as impactful as you and Andy seem to think, but we won't find out if we don't try it. —Kusma (talk) 10:01, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  Whereas I believe that the multiple severe downsides (not just this one) combined with the extremely low benefits that will come even if successful mean that even a trial will come up with a significantly negative benefit:cost analysis. Thryduulf (talk) 12:10, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  What will the net negative impacts of a trial be? Aaron Liu (talk) 13:44, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  All the negatives explained by multiple people multiple times already. Thryduulf (talk) 13:52, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  I don't see any argument that hasn't been responded to. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:56, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  The arguments have been responded to but have not been refuted. Thryduulf (talk) 14:28, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  For example, how does #c-Aaron_Liu-20250711005600-Thryduulf-20250711005500 and #c-Dan_Leonard-20250711201400-Thryduulf-20250711194700 not refute what you said? Aaron Liu (talk) 18:44, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  Is there any evidence of severe (!) downsides outside of hypothetical Wikipedia editor discussions? We already have the topicons. Why don't we see any inklings of these severe downsides, if they are a realistic concern? At least I'm not aware of any. Dege31 (talk) 04:08, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

  The top icons are decoration that most people ignore and have to be investigated (but even then others have pointed out that they cause misconceptions). A tagline is extremely prominent and makes a bold statement to everybody reading the article (even more so if it is expanded to mobile) meaning the problems caused by misleading statements will be very significantly amplified. Thryduulf (talk) 10:13, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

• 

  Oppose I'd not noticed the taglines before and suppose that I've been blanking them as fluff. The specific suggestion of calling out FAs and GAs seems quite marginal as we don't have many of them. Why not give an assessment of the article when it has a lesser status too? It might be more useful to warn readers that an article is a stub or just C-class or whatever.

  And I don't like the idea that this will be forced onto the mobile interface as space is at a premium in that. See the example of Dopamine which I took a snapshot of for another discussion recently. Notice that this doesn't manage to get all of the first sentence of the article onto the first screenful. Adding a tagline would push it off completely.

  So, the idea of giving readers an assessment of the article upfront has merit but the implementation needs work.

  Andrew🐉(talk) 17:55, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  Would you be in favour of putting the assessment class icon ( ) next to the article title? TompaDompa (talk) 18:12, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  No, those icons are too obscure and unclear. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:24, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  Re: the specific suggestion of calling out FAs and GAs seems quite marginal as we don't have many of them: the good and featured systems have broad community support and are currently represented on articles already by topicons with tooltips like "this is a good article". This proposal is intended only as an extension of that as shown above in § Background (tagline), and so any extensions beyond what is already very highly supported would be undue. Also re: it might be more useful to warn readers that an article is a stub or just C-class or whatever a "warning" would violate WP:NODISCLAIMERS. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 18:30, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  WP:NODISCLAIMERS is irrelevant. Every page has a general disclaimer per WP:GENDIS. And there's already a well-established set of tags to show that that an article is a stub. The trouble is that these appear at the bottom of articles where the reader won't see them until it's too late. It's better to make the status of an article clear to the reader at the outset, so that they have this context as they are reading it. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:28, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  You literally used the word "warning", though. That's exactly what NODISCLAIMERS is about. This proposal is about promoting articles that have reached a high standard of quality that the community is proud to present to readers. Giving a "warning" to readers that an article is "just C-class" is the opposite. That could be considered at a later point but should not be part of this proposal. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 22:32, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  Exclusively promotional language is contrary to MOS:PUFFERY and WP:PROMO. It's more informative and NPOV to give the reader our quality rating in a uniform way, whether it's good or bad. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:13, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

  B-class and lower can be changed by anyone anytime. I'm not confident in the quality assurance for those.

  Also, if you want more mobile screen space, dismiss that banner. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:42, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  Re:mobile accessibility- that might be easy for you or me, but the "dismiss banner" button is *really* tiny on mobile. I don't think my mother could reliably click it, for example, she just doesn't have the eyesight anymore. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 18:51, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  Fair point. But that's an issue we could easily solve by enlarging the button; we don't even need to file a task for it as we can simply do it through an interface admin. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:11, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  I'd not noticed or understood that button. That's mainly banner blindness – Wikipedia has a very busy interface and so I tune out the clutter and extraneous excess. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:24, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

  I would think that it's not very busy on mobile. There's only one banner at the top. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:44, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

• Support. This would be a positive for readers and editors alike. Perhaps people opposed should also advocate for removing WP:TMVs from articles—they link to editor-focused stuff as well. We have giant banners when an article has issues, but a small link when it has been determined to meet a set of standards is a bridge too far? Heartfox (talk) 03:15, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
• Weak oppose. I do not see further clutter is necessary. Janhrach (talk) 13:38, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
• Weak oppose I like tag lines to be the same for every article. If it is to be tried, I would propose to do it for the Featured articles first. Readers are more likely to have heard from them from the main page. The articles are higher quality and more editors are needed to certify them as featured. The Good article slogan sounds worse. Ideally it should be measured whether readers understanding of the featured article process increases after the change. Rolluik (talk) 09:02, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

  Do you think the featured article tagline is worthy enough to be trialed and measured first? Aaron Liu (talk) 14:16, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

  I think it makes sense to do that first. I have not myself participated in a FA or Good article process. I'm aware of the cleanup efforts for older FA and Good articles (and also that it seems to have stalled for the featured articles). I think that new featured and good articles seem mostly similar quality wise for most readers but as an editor I see that the featured ones have mostly better sources. Keep in mind that English is not my native language, so I care less about spelling mistakes and similar issues. I'm sceptical though that changing the tag line will have a big effect on anything (increase of FAC's, Good article nominations, FAR's, readers knowledge of quality assesments...). I don't think it will be detrimental either. Maybe we should give people an easy link to the version of the article that was reviewed in the tag or near the tag (not just on the talk page). I see no real problem with giving newer FA's that were on the main page this tag line (If we were confident enough to put it on the main page...). Rolluik (talk) 20:16, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

• Support A marginal improvement to the reader's experience I think. ~ HAL333 15:32, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. I'm sorry; I really believe the article status should be more visible, but I can't stand the tagline being modified in such a drastic way. In my opinion, the benefits of keeping the current tagline intact and free of links and other notices outweigh the benefits of letting the user know an article is good/featured. I'm all in for doing the same thing while keeping the precious tagline intact! --FaviFake (talk) 20:54, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

  Do you have an alternate way to present the information? Maybe including plain text in the {{featured article}} topicon, etc.? Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 21:01, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

  I'm guessing like the "this article is a stub" messages but at the top, perhaps. It could also include the most recent date it was promoted/survived review as recommended above. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:06, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

  This seems fine to me, I mostly opposed the tag changing due to esthetic reasons. The only downside is banner blindness (and scrolling distance) but most readers seem fine with maintenance templates and similar; and featured/good articles are not supposed to have those. Rolluik (talk) 20:27, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

  Nope! I have no idea, but I am conviced the tagline of all things shouldn't be tampered with. FaviFake (talk) 21:37, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

• Strong oppose to "Good article" tagline, weak support to the rest. Our neutral point of view is one of Wikipedia's core content policies. It's not up to us to declare to the reader our articles are "good". I believe our quality article assessments are quite helpful for Wikipedia's editors and I'm happy with the current topicons (which [being icons] don't declare anything and link to the full explanation), but outright writing at the beginning that this is "A good article from Wikipedia" is not neutral. I'm attracted to the argument that this could increase new editor attraction but I don't see that outweighing the opposers' concerns. I also don't believe making the tagline more verbose in response would be a satisfactory workaround. Sophocrat (talk) 02:19, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

  Note: I'm much more open to doing this only with Featured articles and lists due to the arguments others have made. As a bonus "Featured" is much more neutral than "Good". Sophocrat (talk) 02:24, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

  Could you specify how exactly this proposal violates

  All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.

  i.e. neutral point of view? An article assessment is not "view[s] that have been published... on a topic".

  Dege31 (talk) 17:33, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

  This is pedantic. Sophocrat is talking about the principle.
  I was going to say that it would represent all significant views on the article until I realized I was just going to repeat #c-Aaron_Liu-20250710200000-Isaidnoway-20250710182800. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:00, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

  As Aaron Liu says I refer to the principle. We don't declare ourselves to be a reliable source (even though we strive to be!) to the reader. In articles we should avoid stating opinions as facts as our aim is to inform the reader, not make judgements for them. That said, I think I would support doing this only with Featured articles and lists as they have the highest quality standards and because the descriptor "Featured" is just a fact (as those are indeed prominent articles) whereas "Good" is a judgement from us (however well-founded). Sophocrat (talk) 21:36, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

• Support I've been using a userscript that does something similar and it is quite useful. (Wish I could tell you which one, but nothing in my common.js is obviously it.) Loki (talk) 16:20, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

  In § Background (tagline) I note this is explicitly based on the style of Wikipedia:Metadata gadget, which is not in your common.js but in Preferences → Gadgets → Appearance → Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header (documentation). Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 16:37, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, that's it! Thanks. Loki (talk) 21:26, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

• Weak support: Why not? Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 18:36, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
• Weak oppose: On the one hand, it'd be simple, as there's already a gadget for this, it could just require flipping it to default-on. On the other hand, there's already a gadget for this - and more pointedly, we already put an icon in the upper right of the page header for FAs, FLs, and GAs, so having this be by-default seems slightly redundant. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:02, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

  we already put an icon in the upper right of the page this proposal is mostly inspired by Czar's story here, detailing how readers are not just unaware of the meaning of icon-based indicators but actively misguided. I think text and a transparent hyperlink is a clearer presentation. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 05:22, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

• Strong support – I'll take anything at this point... time and time again we've needed increased visibility for our best articles (most readers don't even know these distinctions exist, let alone the difference between featured vs good)... – Aza24 (talk) 21:31, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
• Weak oppose My greatest concern is that most Wiki users have no idea about what this actually means, especially since "good" can be interpreted much differently. In my experience what most readers care about (almost exclusively) is factual correctness, being of course part of being a GA it's not the entire story and (hopefully) most other articles meet that standard too. Highlighting it there makes me feel like it's implying that other articles are inherently "bad" and cannot be trusted. I could however see it work out with FA as not being Featured misses such an implication in my opinion. Squawk7700 (talk) 23:08, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose. As much as I'm a fan of the FA and GA processes and like to gain such honours for the articles I've written, it's basically a Wikipedia internal concept. I don't think we should be publishing such things in a single line tag which is used across the Web, and lacks context for readers of they're not familiar with the processes. While in general, on average such articles are likely to be better written and more reliable than others, it's not a universal truth and it would be a mistake to imply in the tagine such articles can be implicitly trusted.  — Amakuru (talk) 00:30, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

  Don't FAs convey the quality status in a way that is already explicitly designed for public consumption, being featured on the home page, and indicated with an icon on pages for users that are not logged in? The GA process too implies a basic quality threshold has been reached, and is already displayed publicly. That some GAs or FAs fail to live up to their status is surely more of a clarion call for the review process than it is a reason to view the baby as no better than the bathwater. With the icons already present, the proposed changes aren't making anything visible that isn't already. As always, anyone interested in the context of the terms could navigate through to the explanations, as they can now with the icons. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:43, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

  Amakuru isn't the only one to comment that the f.a. system is an internal process. Another problem is that this isn't available on mobile. Finally: I'm not aware if there was consensus or a discussion to implement the topicons. Logoshimpo (talk) 05:25, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  I don't see how being internal is something relevant to what Iskander said. Consensus: Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Archive 4#Neat idea from Spanish Wikipedia, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Archive 4#Should GA and A-class articles be recognisable through a symbol on the article page? Aaron Liu (talk) 22:12, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

  I would repeal the decision made for those two discussions since too many arguments here against this selfreference has been brought up. Logoshimpo (talk) 04:13, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

  There's nothing preventing a discussion from being started on that if one truly believes the arguments have that much support. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:25, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

• Support as with other users. >^CreativeLibrary460 /^{access the library revision}\ 01:09, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
• Support This small change would go a long way to help our readers see when an article is of a higher quality. The icons aren't immediately clear, but text with a link would be much more overt. The more we provide average readers with even a basic understanding of the back-end processes, which is sadly quite uncommon, the better I think they'll be able to engage with our articles. --Grnrchst (talk) 13:05, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

  This small change would go a long way to help our readers see when an article is of a higher quality. no, it will let readers see when some previous version of an article was assessed as being "featured" or "good" and will imply that the revision of the article they are seeing is of that standard (it may or may not be) and that articles not so tagged are inferior (they might be, they might also be superior). I'm also not understanding why a reader should need to know anything about back-end processes in order to engage with articles? Thryduulf (talk) 13:37, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

  I answered your question here — in short, it's helpful info for readers to know to what extent they should trust an article. And in the replies below, myself and others talk about the process by which editors monitor and delist GAs/FAs that no longer meet standards. It's not perfect, of course, but readers know that we are an imperfect work in progress. It's no different than maintenance tags, which also represent a judgement about an article from a particular point in time, which may be outdated but which we try to update if so. This proposal is also no different in kind from our current practice of displaying GA/FA topicons, which we do for the exact same reasons, the only distinction being that a tagline has a slightly higher chance of actually being noticed. Sdkb ^talk 14:43, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

  This is a great point – the worst possible downside of this process is still no worse than maintenance tags (giant reader-facing banners that serve as an often outdated disclaimer) and is effectively the same as the long-accepted reader-visible icons in the top right. The average case, though, is an improvement that helps readers: re why a reader should need to know anything about back-end processes in order to engage with articles, readers have long shown a vague understanding that Wikipedia might have some kind of content review process, but are still very much unaware of how we make these judgments. See for instance the many first-timer comments like "who wrote this crap it's all wrong" that have plagued article talk pages since the beginning of the project. Linking curious readers directly to Wikipedia:Featured articles tells them exactly how articles are reviewed and provides an overview of our content policies. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 15:03, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose. There are already things like the featured star in the top right that indicate this information. Displaying it so prominently gives an undeserved sense of importance to a rather unimportant classification. In addition, the WIkipedia branding has been on articles for twenty years OmegaAOL (talk) 00:29, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

  Why does being there for twenty years mean we shouldn't change it? Aaron Liu (talk) 00:49, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

• Support, conditional on there not being technical issues with the implementation (e.g. I think it would be bad to add a WP:EXPENSIVE call to every single page and then downwardly adjust the limit for actual page content to 499 but this seems surmountable to me) jp×g🗯️ 23:11, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Discussion (tagline)

@Dan Leonard: Can we not also have FLC, FAC, GAN? like so...

{{#switch:{{#invoke:Page assessment raw|get_class|page={{FULLPAGENAME}}|project=Project-independent assessment}}
 | FA = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured articles (linked from tagline)|featured article]]'' from
 | FL = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured lists (linked from tagline)|featured list]]'' from
 | GA = A ''[[Wikipedia:Good articles (linked from tagline)|good article]]'' from
 | FAC = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/PAGENAME/archive#|featured article candidate]]'' from
 | FLC = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/PAGENAME/archive#|featured list candidate]]'' from
 | GAN = A ''[[Talk:PAGENAME/GA#|good article nominee]]'' from
 | From
}} Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

OR, if getting the archive# and GA# might be tedious, we could simply say... Can we not also have FLC, FAC, GAN? like so...

{{#switch:{{#invoke:Page assessment raw|get_class|page={{FULLPAGENAME}}|project=Project-independent assessment}}
 | FA = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured articles (linked from tagline)|featured article]]'' from
 | FL = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured lists (linked from tagline)|featured list]]'' from
 | GA = A ''[[Wikipedia:Good articles (linked from tagline)|good article]]'' from
 | FAC = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates|featured article candidate]]'' from
 | FLC = A ''[[Wikipedia:Featured list candidates|featured list candidate]]'' from
 | GAN = A ''[[Wikipedia:Good article nominations|good article nominee]]'' from
 | From
}} Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

--Vanderwaalforces (talk) 15:42, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't see the point in reader-facing indicators of article nominations. Best to be left for the talk page. Dege31 (talk) 16:10, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

This RFC proposal is intentionally limited to be an extension to the topicons, which already get enough community support to exist. I disagree with this idea (drive-by junk GANs shouldn't be shown to readers) but also just don't think we should overcomplicate the proposal by going beyond what is already represented by topicons. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 16:30, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

@Dan Leonard that makes sense. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 19:14, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Personally, I would better understand those on the oppose side for non-technical reasons, if they could bring in some real data, or real examples, of harm caused by the smaller outreach variants already extant: that is, the topicons, and the talk page assessments. After all, if it is problematic, there should already be evidence. I haven't seen this presented in significant levels. To me, these pitfalls feel remote, and rare. I feel like the potential downsides aren't so big that we can't even do a test run to see how it goes. The large majority of readers read within the confines of the lead paragraphs, so that lessens the potential cumulative impact, too.

Nonetheless, valid concerns. The supporters should also answer: is there will, and capability for scaling up the maintenance of these articles? While this has been ramping up in recent years, this imposes a higher standard.

I've also thought about an idea (this is not a proposal, but fuel for separate discussions, if I, or anyone else, wants to take it further) that maybe takes into account some of the reluctance. It would involve an article losing its reader-facing indicators of GA status or FA status after X years of no review, or Y edits if it's very high activity. That way, there would be a guaranteed minimal level of accountability. Dege31 (talk) 00:38, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Eh, it’s a cosmetic change to the website so I think it's fine to balk at it subjectively. It is a shame that my proposal can't have any data or examples of how this would improve reader outreach (although there does seem to be some interesting-looking papers on FAs), as any analysis of such data would only be possible post hoc. If this passes I do hope to do a 30 day postmortem to see how many people click on the statistical redirects and see how many new editors participate in the project pages. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 00:51, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

As you mention, I don't think there's enough problems to scale up the maintenance yet. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:52, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Regarding scaling up the maintenance of these articles, I hope that one side benefit of this passing may be that, if GA/FA status confers additional prominence compared to the status quo, there will be both more incentive for editors to pursue that status for articles that deserve it and more editors noticing/sending to FAR/GAR when an article has that status that does not deserve it. Sdkb ^talk 04:43, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

• Comment There's too much emphasis on the quality of an article and whether an article is good or bad. Logoshimpo (talk) 06:39, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I see some people voicing opposition because of reservations regarding WP:Good articles, specifically. An alternative might be to implement this for FA and FL, but not GA. TompaDompa (talk) 11:46, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I also think such a proposal would be more likely to be accepted. Sophocrat (talk) 06:58, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

If this proposal fails, I think it might be worth it to consider something like the dewiki way (wording very tentative):

This article became a reviewed good article on {date} in this revision.

and something similar for FA. Though I do wonder how long after the RfC closers should the discussion be started and whether it should be started even if it succeeds. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:42, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

I just took a look at de.wiki and their rating system and I'd be more supportive about this proposal if our system would be more similar to theirs because their equivalent to GA "Lesenswerter Artikel" lit. "Article worth reading" reflects the meaning of GA a lot better than "good" in my opinion. But I get that that's unfeasible already because the translation is way too long and sounds a bit awkward. Squawk7700 (talk) 09:26, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

I don't see how that's any better either. It still has all the problems other commenters say about "good article" above. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:39, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

I agree, what I ment is the problem of what “good” means and the implied opposite of “Bad”. Squawk7700 (talk) 15:54, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

the opposite of "worth reading" is "not worth reading", which is the same thing to me. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:59, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

In addition, quality is not the only factor in what makes an article "worth reading" - a generally terrible article is very much worth reading if it contains a single reliable source that verifies as correct (or not correct) the one claim you are attempting to verify or it unlocks your understanding of whatever it is you are researching. Even a featured article is not worth reading if it doesn't contain the information you are looking for (which could be for many reasons, including not quite being in scope, the article being outdated, a source no longer being available, the relevant portion being removed (with or without consensus) or vandalised, etc). Thryduulf (talk) 16:20, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

That changed my perspective, thanks. I totally agree Squawk7700 (talk) 16:47, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

I don't like this as much. While I support any addition of plaintext with wikilinks, the English Wikipedia has long had opposition to emphasizing old revisions. See for instance the massive difference between how pending changes are used between German and English. I think it goes against the wiki model and its core belief that articles always get better over time. Articles should never have prominent links to old revisions. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 17:18, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

Could you elaborate on the PendChang difference or the opposition, especially its reason? I think when the wiki model works, it's isn't at all bad to highlight how the article has evolved since it was established to pass a minimum standard. I don't see how the inclusion of the link leads to any default implication that the article got worse. It's just a tool for all the examine, serving the "transparency" part of our ethos. AFAIK even on enwiki, logged-out users see the latest approved revision (an old one) on PendChang-protected pages by default. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:47, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

• Wikipedia talk:German page approval solution
• Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions
• Template:Pending changes discussions

The reason we gave GAR and FAR is because classifying an article as GA or FA applies to future revisions, unless and until that status is revoked. It isn't just for the one reviewed version. If it were, we wouldn't still call them GAs and FAs or have processes for removal. Linking to historic revisions can confuse readers, especially when transcluded templates have since been deleted (the deletion of the lang-xx family breaks the first sentence of many historic revisions). Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 22:12, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

Those are about effectively applying pending changes to every single article. If we can have pending changes protection as it is at enwiki today, I don't see why we can't have a link to an old revision especially when it's labeled as an old revision. I still believe that having a link to the old revision is a useful point of comparison. Anyways, we can drop the revision link if needed. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:37, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

I referred to enwiki's rejection of dewiki Gesichtete Versionen as an example of the philosophical differences in the wiki model. You can see arguments like incompatible with the basic principles behind wikipedia ... they no longer qualify as a wiki (Erachima), against wiki ethos (IanOfNorwich), creeping implementation of flagged revisions in disguise (S Marshall), 'A rose by any other name?' (OmniArticleEditor). The German Wikipedia's practice of placing a little check mark on specific logged revisions of articles, and presenting them to readers as if they are better than or more reliable than the current one, represents a significant change to the wiki model akin to Citizendium. Articles are assumed to still improve after promotion, and if they decline then they are demoted. Kusma already discussed this above, with the example of a dewiki article that links to an old revision without images or inline citations and has broken template calls (as I mentioned). Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 01:08, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping to this interesting discussion. Although I personally oppose any and all implementation of Pending Changes, vehemently and on a philosophical level, if we are going to have to put up with the awfulness of Pending Changes in our Wiki, then Pending Changes interacts with Good and Featured Articles in complex ways and I'm leery of one-size-fits-all decisions. I think we need to be mindful that Good and Featured Articles are an anomaly -- a holdover from old days of Wikipedia, back when we got to say things like "This is a good article" without having a reliable source for that contention. I think the fact that these assertions are made by Wikipedians rather than by trustworthy sources is highly relevant to the decision of whether to link them.

Some good and featured articles are about things that scholars have largely finished thinking about. If our subject matter is, say, Tropical Depression Ten (2007) then I'm with Aaron Liu. I don't think any massive reevaluation of that topic is likely, so I think we could quite legitimately pick one revision of that article and say, "This! This is the Featured Revision of this Featured Article!" and crystallize it thus for all time.

But other good and featured articles are about things that are still in flux. If our subject matter is, say, DNA nanotechnology then I'm with Dan Leonard. There could be a new discovery that could substantially change the article, at any time, and I would say that to pick one historical revision and imply that it's the platonic ideal of that article isn't the greatest idea I've ever heard.—S Marshall T/C 03:08, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

I remember having discussions about pending changes in the past but with edit filters in place, this wikipedia seems to prefer protection Logoshimpo (talk) 04:20, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I really don't think having a message like what I mentioned at all implies the old revision being the apex. "became a good article in {revision}" retains the meaning of "everything after this" Dan mentioned.

I also find what's extracted from the pending changes discussion weird as applied here. It seems Dan's point is that this is supposed to illustrate opposition to presenting a specific revision with a checkmark, a star, or a plus sign. But that's what we've lived with and supported for a decade and a half, just not at the scale of every single mainspace article. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:46, 11 August 2025 (UTC)