Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

I believe that the Good Article criteria section 6b should be modified to include the use of alt text. This is part of the Manual of Style and is an accepted part of the FA criteria (as an extension of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Captions). It is relatively simple to implement (there is and is a benefit for users with screen readers or those who cannot load images due to slow internet connections or other restrictions (ex: an internet block on Commons). Because "suitable captions" has always been part of section 6, this could be interpreted as always having been a part of the criteria, though it wasn't linked directly as it is in WP:FACR.

Current text: 6b: media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

Proposed text: 6b: media are relevant to the topic, have suitable captions, and include alt text.

The Manual of Style is already alluded to in 1b, so this isn't coming out of nowhere to mention this part of it. If this were to be implemented, it would be certainly be a project to go over the backlog of older non-compliant GAs and bring them up to the standard, but compared to more major issues that plague old GAs (unsourced passages?) it's much easier to fix. I do not see this as being an issue that would warrant a Good Article Reassessment on its own for this reason either. -- Reconrabbit 17:55, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

• I'm weary about adding even tighter expectations into the GA standard, especially when such standards already exist if wanting to get the article to featured status. If we add a little FA-criteria here, and a little there, the GA standard starts to become FA-lite. My view is that captions should be (and are stipulated as being) expected to accompony images, while an article isn't going to become a firmer "good" by adding alt-text to images. A reviewer may encourage it, but do we really need to mandate it for GA standard? Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:10, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

  I would support it, personally. It's not a big difference for the article creator - not much more work than adding the initial caption is in the first place - and is a big help for accessibility. I don't at all think it's WP:CREEP. -- asilvering (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

I feel this is a bit of creep of rules. Are we really going to start to fail articles because there is no alt text? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:52, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

I certainly hope not. That would be an incredibly lazy fail, since it would take the reviewer only moments to write up some of their own if that were the only barrier to GA status. -- asilvering (talk) 19:00, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Quite - so why have it in the rules. I'd support a more general "article should meet the majority of the MOS". If someone says your images should have Alttext in a review, you just put it in. Why have a rule for it. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:06, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

But "should meet the majority of the MOS" is a huge expansion over the GA criteria! -- asilvering (talk) 19:11, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

No, I agree. The wording I have is bad, but I don't really support very minor additions being part of the criteria. If we are to make the criteria larger, I'd want it to be for more general adherance the MOS, rather than one or many small parts of it. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:16, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

It would be on the same level as someone saying "your images don't have captions, the GA criteria says they should". It is a straightforward fix. -- Reconrabbit 19:16, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Seeing your second reply that came in right as I wrote mine - I see the issue that would come up from this exactly because it is such a small change. I just feel it is a simple step to make articles more accessible; putting it in as part of these criteria could make it more visible over the whole project as well. -- Reconrabbit 19:19, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Weak oppose for now per Kusma; although I agree that alt text should become standard for quality articles, current on-project guidelines for alt text (MOS:ALT and Help:Alt text) are too dubious to work with at the moment—they both contradict sources like e.g. section508.gov's advice, the former contradicts itself constantly on the level of detail to be used, and the MOS:BLANKALT advice on |alt=icon / |alt=photograph / etc. for decorative non-PD images is sketchy (perhaps even its definition of decorative images—maybe images that provide visual structure aren't decorative? I tried to contact section508.gov for advice, but my email didn't reach them). I think these guidelines need to be improved before we can make alt text something to be done systematically. {{Lemondoge|Talk|Contributions}} 22:39, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Very good points, I often find myself trying to recommend simpler alt texts for images but struggling to find concrete guidelines on what is appropriate for a given figure. And that's just in the context of biology articles (when is it more appropriate to provide every aspect of a detailed diagram for alt text over just "diagram of a flower"?). -- Reconrabbit 13:20, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

@Reconrabbit and Lemondoge: I started Help:Alt text to give practical examples and links because the guideline was too confusing. Any feedback on it is appreciated. What parts contradict section508.gov? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 22:06, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Reading it over I don't see the contradiction to section508 either, unless it's in regards to decorative images, which should probably get a clear definition within the guidelines. There aren't many examples I can think of where using a decorative image would be appropriate regardless. (I can barely remember typing the above comment even though it was only 2 weeks ago...) -- Reconrabbit 19:15, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

@Rjjiii: your help page doesn't give much useful guidance for the alt text of the class of images I care most about, mathematical diagrams (where the images can be complex but are not plots of data so advice to tell users where to find the data is unhelpful). But ignoring this class of images in favor of images of physical objects, artworks, and data plots is par for the course: you're not worse than other guidelines in this respect. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:00, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Our GA rules deliberately include only some of the MOS and I'm not sure either way about whether we should incorporate all of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Captions (which does include alt-text). However, I have a broader concern, that the more we creep our rules towards mechanically checkable things like the presence of footnotes and alt-text in certain positions, the more we are also encouraging reviewers and article maintainers to pass over the other aspects of our rules that are not so mechanical: are these references, images, and content the right references, images, and content for an encyclopedia article on this topic? For that matter, checking whether alt text exists is far from the same as checking whether it is good as alt text. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:37, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

• Generally, having reasonable ALT text would be a plus, but Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images is not a usable guideline that tells us how to write good ALT text and may even mislead us (see the discussion on the talk page). I do not think "images have ALT text, but it is not useful" is a big step up from "no ALT text", so I oppose for the moment. —Kusma (talk) 18:16, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

  A related question: supposing I want to make sure an article has appropriate alt text. Is there an easy way to do so, without groveling through the source code view of the article and without adding third-party extensions to my browser (Firefox)? My default user interface does not appear to show alt text. Going to the Firefox accessibility property inspector separately for each image works but is cumbersome and non-obvious. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:30, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

  One of the features of Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups is to show the ALT text for images on hover. —Kusma (talk) 06:59, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

  Ok, it seems you also have to disable "Redirect image links to Commons for files hosted there" (which I use much more frequently than wanting to find out about alt text) for this to work. Otherwise it does nothing on image hover. And after disabling commons redirects, as well as getting uglier popups on wikilinks, I get a popup on an image that shows me what its commons landing page would look like except that the templates are unexpanded. Because it's entirely about the commons landing page, I see nothing about its alt text here. Am I doing something wrong or is that what the gadget is supposed to do? —David Eppstein (talk) 08:14, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

  If you hover over an image that does have ALT text, it shows what it is (try those on the Main Page). If there is no ALT text, it is not mentioned. —Kusma (talk) 10:38, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

• This is getting into WP:instructions creep territory. We already have extra hoops with the new mandatory source review, and it hasn't exactly helped with the backlog, more the contrary. GAN risks becoming a single person FAC review (where alt-text isn't exactly required, just encouraged), which would be fine if we had a corresponding reviewer pool to pull from, but we don't. FunkMonk (talk) 17:27, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

• Weak support. I don't think this is instruction creep; it takes like less than 5 minutes to describe an image so I wouldn't mind I guess (I also think that failing articles solely because they don't contain alt text is incredibly lazy... it's like failing an article for failing to meet Criterion 1b because its lead violates MOS:FIRST despite the rest of it being fine). However, I am concerned that if we add it as part of the GAN criteria, then it would be a lot of work to add alt texts to existing GAs. Icepinner (Come to Hakurei Shrine!) 09:18, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose; however, alt text can be made encouraged without being made mandatory (like advising that a good article candidate with un- or sloppily formatted citations have the citations formatted correctly for a future FA candidacy). I see that at least two other users have expressed concerns of instruction creep, so that's that. Whyiseverythingalreadyused (t · c · he/him) 02:18, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
• Weak oppose I think adding alt text is always best practice, but GA is already strict enough as is and I can't imagine I'd ever support delisting a GA based on missing alt text alone. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:05, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

  I also oppose this for the same reason as TAOT. While alt text in every article would be good, the absence of it should not be necessary in order for an article to maintain its quality as a GA. Also, Lee has a valid point - this might lead to people failing articles for the trivial issue of not having alt text. Accessedgrant (Epicgenius mobile alt) (talk) 01:19, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you to everyone who had input here. It reads as clear that this isn't something that will be added to the GA criteria. I'd like to bring the issue of the alt-text guidelines up with WikiProject Policies and Guidelines as something that should be made more clear. I was looking to propose this addition as something that would be similar to the requirement of "having a consistent citation style/reference layout", that is, something that can be noticed and fixed rather than causing an article to fail review. Looks like the underlying guidance should be tidied up first. -- Reconrabbit 13:21, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

See here; Prhartcom has updated the {{GA nominee}} template to implement some additional validation, and to make the errors show up in bold red on the article talk page, with the goal of nudging the users who sometimes misuse this template (usually because they didn't follow the instructions) to fix the errors themselves. If there are any objections to these changes, please say so. Once there is consensus to do so we'll move the sandbox version to the template. Are there any other pages where a note should be left about this? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:37, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

Template:GA nominee/testcases, I asume? CMD (talk) 14:06, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

Roger that. Prhartcom (talk) 14:12, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived.

I've recently made some changes to the way ChristieBot handles errors. Since I know there are some editors who help out by fixing various kinds of GAN error, here's a summary of how it is now supposed to work, and what can usefully be monitored. My hope is that this is a lot simpler and easier for editors to monitor than it used to be.

There are five different ways that errors can show up:

• Individual GAN entries on the main GAN page. Some issues will appear directly next to a nomination entry (in red text). These come from the {{GANentry}} template and may be further tweaked in the future. These usually indicate something editors can fix on that specific nomination.
• Article talk page. Thanks to Prhartcom, who has enhanced the {{GA nominee}} template, if there are errors in the GA nomination template they will now show up on the article talk page in bold red text. These are typically formatting or parameter issues that the nominator (or any editor) can correct. Note that you can also watchlist Category:GAN error to see these, since anything that creates an error in the GA nomination template will put the talk page that category.
• GAN errors page. User:ChristieBot/GAN errors will list all current nomination/template issues. These will be similar to the problems identified on the GAN page and the article talk page, per the above. If you're interested in helping fix GAN errors this is a good page to watch. For example, it will list nominations with missing or invalid parameters, and nominations in an inconsistent state. Note that the "Errors" section on the GAN page has been eliminated.
• ChristieBot bug messages page. User:ChristieBot/Bug messages will list internal bot errors (unexpected failures, database issues, etc.). These are not generally fixable by editors, but may be useful for awareness or reporting. Most editors will not find it useful to watch this.
• Operational status page. User:ChristieBot/Operational status will show a summary of the operational state. Sometimes there are temporary system issues that are not bugs or GAN errors; this page will (when possible) show the status. This page is transcluded onto ChristieBot's user page. This may be worth watching if you want to know, for example, why ChristieBot has not run in a few hours; this might tell you why.

This separation is intended to make it clearer which issues might benefit from editor attention and which are informational only. If you see any errors that don't fit this pattern, or if there are any questions, let me know; it's entirely possible I have not yet converted all the messages to fit this plan. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:23, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi. Can GAR be requested informally after more than seven days of disagreement have passed and no comment was made yet from the defendent/original nominator or the original GA reviewer who may have overlooked the concerns raised afterwards? M. Billoo 04:16, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Is there any easy way of finding out my list of Good Article Nominations? The report says I have seven, but I can only remember five. Many thanks. KJP1 (talk) 07:40, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

@KJP1 You can see them at this link. CMD (talk) 07:54, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

@CMD - Super helpful, thanks. Two went to FA, which is why I didn't remember them. Best regards. KJP1 (talk) 07:56, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

hello! i changed my username from @9koyami to @Kinnimeyu a couple weeks ago and it seems to have reset my review/GA count. i've reviewed 1 (Stardust (Danny Brown album)) and have 2 GAs (Minecraft Manhunt and Ruben Sim). can my numbers be fixed? thank you! Kinnimeyu (talk) 23:08, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi Kinnimeyu, please consult the instructions at User:ChristieBot#What to do if your username changes. Thanks, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:00, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

The GAN statistics tool here lists 2025 Rajasthan Royals season as delisted; but it never was delisted or even nominated for; it's still GA. Vestrian24Bio 09:37, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up -- I'll take a look when I get a chance to see if I can figure out why this is happening. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:21, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Sorry if this is the wrong place, but I would like to propose changing the UK rail transport subcategories. Currently, the only UK specific subtopic is

• Rail bridges, tunnels and facilities — United Kingdom (95 articles)

I would like to propose splitting this into:

• Railway bridges, viaducts, and tunnels — United Kingdom (10 articles)
• Railway stations — United Kingdom (88 articles)
• Railway lines and companies — United Kingdom (26 articles)

These would also pick up a lot of articles that are just sitting in the general "Rail transport" section. This will make it easier to navigate the section and more helpful for splitting the articles up by subtopic. UK train-related articles that will still not be split for being UK-related are:

• People
• Train accidents
• Locomotives/rolling stock

Please let me know your thoughts. JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 16:59, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Same with Singapore's MRT stations, seeing as there are almost 100 of them at a GA (out of 143) JuniperChill (talk) 23:14, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind Jacob's proposal. On Juniper's comment, I wonder if we would need to do that for other systems, like the NYC subway or any of Seattle's rail transport systems; I know Epicgenius and SounderBruce (respectively) have promoted a lot of station articles. Icepinner (Come to Hakurei Shrine!) 00:34, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

A 10-article subsection is very small. What is the benefit of splitting that off? CMD (talk) 03:10, 3 April 2026 (UTC)