Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Newsletter/December 2012/FE

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:by ΛΧΣ21™

File:ABP review.jpg

Reviews are the process into which a selected user verifies that an article meets an specific standard. Inside the good article process, the task of the reviewer is to make sure the article is up and already meeting [at the time of its promotion] the good article criteria, which consists of six different elements: The article has to be well-written, factually accurate and verifiable, broad in its coverage, presents the facts in a neutral point of view, be stable and illustrated [if possible]. Usually, some of the nominations listed already meet these guidelines, and they can be promoted without further comment. Although, a pattern of dissaproval of this methodology has been widely seen recently between both reviewers and constant contributors to the process.

The main concern that those users arise is the existence of the so-called "rubber-stamp" [or "drive-by"] reviews. Rubber-stamp reviews are those in which the reviewers slightly review an article against the criteria, and overlook critical issues the article may have. This brings up to the promotion of articles that, one way or another, fail to achieve the necessary standard considered from good articles. As history has proven, and previous backlog elimination drives have showcased, criterion 4 [neutrality] is the most difficult to evaluate, and criterion 6 [images] is the one which gets overlooked more often. Several other criteria are measured differently from user to user, and some users may have higher promotion standards than others.

Because of this, promoting articles without leaving some comments, even if they end up being beyond the criteria, is highly discouraged and most users recommend against so. Why? The main reason for this is that leaving a review empty, only stating that the article is being promoted, can be confused with the rubber-stamp reviews mentioned before and does not demonstrate how the reviewer measured the article against the criteria. But, from where does the rubber-stamp review come? The origins of this peculiar type of review dates back to the beginnings of backlog elimination drives, and is the direct result of the existence of competition between the users participating in such drives.

This affirmation was successfully confirmed in the last June-July 2012 drive, when, after the addition of a leaderboard, users started reviewing a considerable amount of articles in a very short timespan, only to achieve the first position of the drive. So, one of the main reasons of the existence of drive-by reviews is competition. A first-place race that renders reviewers, in their attempt to achieve the highest number of reviews, unable to take the time to verify the articles against the criteria and spot all the possible failures that it may have.

How do we solve this? Drive-by reviews are not a big issue by themselves, and represent a small percentage of all reviews done inside the process. Several users may argue that the number is way above, others that it's way below, but in general, drive-by reviews are only a big issue when backlog elimination drives are running, and this have caused several never-ending discussions regarding the very existence of such drives, and all the undesirable phenomena that appears under their development. Currently, after the request for comment that ran for 15 days in November 2012, the new format designed for drives appears to have slayed drive-by reviews from them, although new challenges have appeared. This only demonstrates that the only way to find solutions is establishing changes and tweaking the current system, until we find one that perfectly fits what community asks for. Now, we have several balance issues regarding the highlighting of older nominations over newer ones, but that is just another issue that increased in popularity after community found consensus over issues that were darkening it before.

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