User:Jens Lallensack/How to stay motivated when reviewing Good Articles

Reviewing good article nominations (WP:GAN) for WP:GA can be highly rewarding – or utterly frustrating. Compared to Wikipedia's other major reviewing facilities – WP:PR and WP:FAC – reviewing a good article comes with added responsibility and commitment, because there is only one reviewer responsible for any given article. For this reason, picking the wrong review might kill your motivation. This essay shows how to stay a motivated good article reviewer.

Motivation is all you need

The trick is to pick reviews that align with your motivations, rather than ones that would draw you out.

Don't accept a review just because you think you should, when you would actually prefer not to. Forcing yourself through something is rarely going to work; if you burn out, you would not help anybody in the project.

Don't be afraid to cherry-pick your favorite nominations: what is a cherry for you may not be a cherry for others, the diversity of interests and motivations in Wikipedia is immense. There are surely articles that are nobodies cherries, which is often not because of the topic but because of quality issues (too detailed, too technical, too long, poor prose, lack of context, etc.). Maybe you have an idea how to turn a nominated article into a cherry – letting the author know can make the difference.

Also don't worry if your knowledge on the article topic seems insufficient. Simply point out what you cannot understand. For a technical article, that might exactly be what the nominator is looking for: they want people to be able to understand their articles.

Know your motivations

In order to pick a nomination that's right for you, you need to know your motivations. There are many possible reasons that could make reviewing for GAN a fulfilling experience. Which ones align with you?

1. helping authors to become better writers
2. motivating others, especially newbies
3. give something back after you already received helpful reviews yourself, or pay it forward for your future nominations
4. increasing the number of worthy GAs
5. decreasing reviewing backlog
6. learning editing skills from other editors
7. learning about topics you are unfamiliar with, while actively contributing to the respective article
8. communicating with editors across Wikipedia, learning what's up in other wiki projects
9. collaborating in improving diverse articles

Types of GAN nominations

This non-exhaustive list shows the diversity of nominations that regularly appear at GAN. Know what too look for in order to pick a nomination you really want to review. This isn't meant to criticise any particular type of nominator. Rather, it shows that they all have their merit, and that no single nomination is suitable for all reviewers.

1. The perfect nomination. Often written by seasoned WP editor, often with the aim to submit to FAC on the next step. If you're looking for a good read on the couch while only occasionally making notes on nitpicks, this is for you. Finding issues is challenging but the nominator is often very grateful if you do find them. This type aligns best with motivations 6-8.
2. The newbie nomination. Editors having none or very few GAs require a bit more input and patience, but are often highly motivated and learn fast. Especially fulfilling if motivations 1-2 are yours.
3. The drive-by nomination. Occasionally, an editor, often an inexperienced one, nominates an article that they think should be a GA but spent minimal effort on it, if any, and isn't prepared to address significant reviewer concerns. These are often high-importance articles, but more often than not, they don't meet the criteria. Only pick if motivation 5 is your thing. Ask if the nominator is prepared to actually put significant work into the article before engaging in an in-depth review, as they might not be aware of this expectation.
4. The collaboration nomination. This is often an article that is lacking in multiple aspects, often obviously so, but the nominator is experienced and prepared to work with you to get it to GA level. This often requires a lot of reviewer involvement, while the nominator might only have done superficial work before nominating. Can be great and fulfilling teamwork if you deeply care about the topic in question, and if motivation 9 is your thing. If #5 (decreasing reviewing backlog) is your motivation and you intend to quick fail, check if the nominator has a habit of simply renominating any failed article after fixing the examples you listed.
5. The topic nomination. Some editors aim to get as many articles of their pet topic to GA level as possible and may nominate multiple very similar, often short and highly specialized, articles at once or in close succession. Suitable if you are equally focused on quantity (motivations 4 and 10), but can be demotivating if you have a quality-over-quantity attitude.
6. The expert-but-poor-prose nomination. Often, these are highly motivated and productive editors who make an tremendous effort to write comprehensive, detailed (sometimes excessively detailed), and well-sourced articles – but display poor writing skills. When almost every sentence needs one or more fixes, it is easy to get caught in endless fix-loops. Such a review may be worth a lot of extra effort if motivation #1 (helping authors to become better writers) is yours. However, be aware that not all editors are interested or motivated to work on their writing skills to begin with, since acquiring them is a difficult, and sometimes painful, process. If motivation #1 is important to you, avoid picking up another nomination of the same nominator if you see that they repeated their old mistakes, as your efforts may soon start to feel pointless.

A motivation-focused reviewing strategy

1. Do standard checks. Nothing is more frustrating than putting a lot of work into a review just to notice that there is a fundamental showstopper and the article has to be failed because of that. Before you start an in-depth review, check if
   1. the article was at GAN before, and if old issues have been fixed (if not, consider if a quick fail per WP:QF is warranted)
   2. there isn't an ongoing edit war or content dispute
   3. the editor is still active (if not, ask, though they will usually confirm that they are)
   4. the article does not show signs of AI writing
   5. the article contains plagiarism or close paraphrasing (run through )
   6. everything has inline citations and the sources don't raise red flags (also see this user script to highlight unreliable sources)
   7. how much of the article was worked on by the nominator? (Sections that the nominator did not revise themselves might require additional spot checking)
   8. the prose is acceptable. Read a sample paragraph, and if this reveals a generally poor prose quality, focus the review on that first instead of wasting time with formatting nitpicks.
2. Do half the review before accepting it, so that you can abandon it if it turns out to be too tedious. This is a good strategy if you hate to fail articles, or if you are unsure whether you can really commit to a full review. If you decide not to accept the review, you could still list your preliminary notes and thoughts on the article talk, without any obligation.
3. Do your spot check before reading the nominated article in detail. Sourcing issues may not be obvious without a spotcheck. It can be extremely frustrating for both the reviewer and nominator if an article has to be failed due to sourcing issues after a long prose review. Per WP:SPOTCHECK, don't hesitate to ask the author for quotes or instructions on how to access the sources, which allows you to spend more of your time on reading the nominated article.
4. Don't provide exhaustive lists of issues when you can just give examples. If the article has prose or accessibility issues, estimate how long your list would be if you were to list them all individually. The longer the review, the greater the risk to lose motivation. If you can instead provide more general instructions combined with examples, you are effectively asking the nominator to go over the article themselves to find similar issues. This does not only save you time: If your motivation is to help editors become better writers (#1), this approach can be more fruitful because it forces the nominator to actually learn how to identify, fix, and avoid the issue. Although a list of individual issues is usually easier to handle for the nominator, some nominators are likely to repeat the same mistakes in their next nomination if they simply work down a list without much reflection.
5. Avoid fix loops where you list examples, the nominator fixes them, you list more examples, the nominator fixes them, and so on. Doing this too often is a certain way to burnout. Don't feel guilty if you fail the article because you reached fix-loop territory while the significant problems are still there. In some cases, you could also consider offering to continue your review at WP:PR, without the time pressure obligation of GAN and with a chance that other editors take over some of the reviewing work.
6. Fixing simple issues yourself can be quicker than explaining them. Posting the link to the diff makes sure that the nominator checks your changes for potential mistakes and, hopefully, learns from them.
7. Motivate nominators motivates you. Be considerate, show warmth, work with care. Be polite, don't play the teacher. Suggest changes rather than demand changes. Thank the nominator for their work and point out what you liked about the article. Say "please let me know if you have any questions". Make sure that your comments are clear and actionable, so that the nominator knows what to do and how to improve.
8. Don't overdo. If you review a high-quality article with very few issues, it is good to list any minor nitpick you can find to make the article even better, and to demonstrate that a thorough review was done. However, if the article has many issues, remember what the GA criteria actually require, and what they do not require. In this case, focus on just the dealbreakers. In any case, prevent your review from getting too long. Regarding the spot checks, checking three sources may be enough if you don't expect to find issues. To be clear: It is usually better to do a bit more, but the benefit of doing a lot more isn't worth risking your motivation.

See also

• Wikipedia:Good article reviewing guide
• User:Joopercoopers/Zen and the art of good reviewing