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GA Reassessment

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• The article's neutrality has been questioned, it is clearly not stable and has been subject to full PP because of edit warring. Perhaps it can be reassessed after the 2020 election when things have calmed down but as it stands now, it fails GA. _Talk 📧 14:59, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

  I agree, this is a clear delist for the time being. Mz7 (talk) 17:32, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

• It was promoted to GA back in 2008, before he even became VP. The article has since grown by leaps and bounds, and is unrecognizable compared to the 2008 version. Now I do harbor some hope that the article can be kept at status however, as was done with Obama's article. Obama was made an FA in 2004. It received a whopping 10 FA reviews between 2007 and 2012, but hard working contributors ensured that it kept FA status throughout Obama's campaign and presidency. Now...do I think that could be done here? Perhaps. But unless a group of contributors is willing to come together to save it, I would opt to delist (And no, I don't have time to join a GA team I'm afraid). My main concerns is neutrality, especially as we come into the election. Everything is pretty much sourced, but I would like to see a thorough source review. I personally don't think stability is an issue as long as any controversial changes are made into RfC's and gain consensus...which is probably how most big edits to this page are going to need to be made in the next year anyway. CaptainEek ⚓ 19:32, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

That isn't how GA works, CaptainEek. We don't leave it with a GA rating when there is edit warring and controversy surrounding it. If it ever settles down, it can be renominated. Just because it passed in 2008, doesn't mean it remains a GA 12 years later. That's why we have GAR. It would be a different story if we were looking at promoting it to FA but that certainly isn't the case now. _Talk 📧 21:41, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Atsme, we also do not delist without mentioning specific issues that makes it fall below GA. I do not think it is as unstable as you say. We should go for a couple editors to do a full review and see if some other editors can take care of any issues and rescue it. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 03:12, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

• At the time this GAR was written (15 April): "as it stands now" edit warring had long ceased ("stability"), full page protection had ceased (in-line with the closing of an RfC dealing with BLP matters), and neutrality concerns remain(?) for a section in the article that is continuously being worked on (something that happens on Misplaced Pages every day). If the nominator for this GAR could please elaborate further as to why this article should be delisted, that'd be great. —MelbourneStar☆ 04:15, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
• Delist If it was going to be at GAN right now it would be an immediate fail as there is edit warring and several content disputes. Since it already is a GA but now is experencing edit warring, has content disputes and apparently editors have questioned the article's neutrality, it fails GA as shown here.--MONGO (talk) 19:20, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
• Remove GA It's not one. It won't be one during the election season. It fails a number of GA criteria and does not resemble the article that was assessed as a GA. There are major content RfC's, edit warring, content forks, and various other distractions. ConstantPlancks (talk)
• Remove GA As it stands, our article Joe Biden is partisan campaign literature in large part. Not only is it subject to edit warring, but there is massive partisan editing to minimize Biden's recent gaffes and accusations that Biden has engaged in nonconsensual physical contact with women up to and including fingerbanging a staffer while he was in the United States Senate. Compare our article Brett Kavanaugh to this article and it's apparent the degree to which this article glosses over important issues which were brought up in our article on Brett Kavanaugh.

The degree of political slant in Joe Biden makes a mockery of our WP:NPOV ethic. --loupgarous (talk) 17:30, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• Here following a notice at the reassessment page. I am very familiar with the GAR process from a practical standpoint and don't really care about American politics if that is an issue. I haven't looked at the article yet, I am just commenting on what I am seeing at this page. This has been opened as an individual reassessment. This means that the person opening it is supposed to close it. Other comments are welcome, but in the end it is up to Atsme to close it as they see fit. In best practise the person opening the reassessment presents some clear examples of how it fails the criteria. However, we don't delist for edit warring or ongoing rfcs. The stability criteria is more a practical criteria for reviewers (it is hard to review an article if it is constantly changing). By the same principle, if there is an ongoing content dispute it is better to wait for that to settle down before conducting a reassessment. Also the GAR process should not be used as a tool to resolve content disputes (not saying that is the case here, but I have seen this in the past). AIRcorn (talk) 21:58, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• While this is formatted as an individual reassessment, I will note that a lot of the comments here aren't particularly helpful. Assertions that an article fails one of the criteria are easy to make, but in the absence of substantiating evidence, carry no weight, and are not actionable. With respect to political articles in particular, assertions that an article fails NPOV are a dime a dozen. To be constructive GAR comments, opinions here need to get into the substance of what needs to change in the article, and why, with specific reference to the source material. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:10, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
• Thank you all very much for the input, but I disagree with the "keep" sentiment as this is a totally different article from the one that was promoted in 2008. The new article fails GA criteria which is why we have GAR, but there is more to it as the following will demonstrate:

1. GA/FA promotion has been my focus as a WP editor since 2011, and I was taken back a step or two when I discovered this article was promoted over a decade ago under dubious circumstances; the latter of which is part of the reason I initiated this GAR.
2. The article is not stable which makes it an immediate fail. It also requires a level of PP because of the disagreements regarding content - keeping in mind that consensus decides what does or does not get included but consensus can change, so if PP and DS are in place, and RfCs are ongoing as more material is added/removed, it tells us the article lacks stability and does not meet GA criteria; rather, it is a work in progress. As most long-standing editors are aware, edit wars and disputes typically arise when there are NPOV issues, and it matters not if the article is political or happens to be about dogs. An unstable article that gets promoted despite failing GA criteria makes a mockery of the process, especially when the instability is not caused by vandalism, and full protection has to be applied.
3. When an article wears the GA symbol and doesn't qualify, it sends the wrong message to editors and readers alike. It also depreciates the hard work that I and other longtime editors have invested as reviewers/promoters over the years.
4. After carefully reviewing this article from when it was first promoted in 2008 until now, I found that it was not only disappointing, it sadden me to think the process has been exploited and drug into the political arena. All one has to do is look at the spikes in revision history stats for the page.
5. GA1 failed on 9/17/2008 - read the discussion and what was involved, if you haven't already - it was supposed to fail. Two days later, GA2 unsurprisingly passes...a few months prior to the 2008 election. Look at the article that passed. The Biden article today is not even close to being the same article that was dubiously promoted to GA in 2008, 2 days after it failed.
6. During the time between elections, the article has not undergone a single peer review but it has changed dramatically and has expanded beyond what WP:Article length suggests.
7. I did not rush to remove GA status because I wanted input from other editors to see how they felt. I am quite confident that I made the right decision when I initiated this GAR.

I am going to demote this article for the reasons I mentioned above. Once all the issues have been resolved, it is possible that the article can be improved enough to meet GA criteria once it is stable, but I highly recommend a peer review first. _Talk 📧 18:50, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

I am not particularly familiar with the GA process so I will defer to others' judgement. However, I would like to respond to some of your points.

• 1, 4, 5) Could you please explain what you mean by "dubious circumstances" and/or why you disagree with GA2? I read GA1 and GA2 and nothing seemed dubious to me.
• 2, 6, 7) Coffeeandcrumbs and MelbourneStar both seem to have asked for specific issues with the article. The only issues you cited are stability, that the article's neutrality has been questioned, and length.

• With respect to the issue of stability, the recent "edit warring" was the result of an ongoing RFC. It can be expected to subside now that the Tara Reade RFC has concluded and the content has largely been moved to Joe Biden sexual assault allegation. (For this particular RFC, the unique circumstance of the gap in time between arguably-RS sources and definitely-RS sources reporting Reade's allegations contributed to the edit warring.)
• With respect to the issue of neutrality, you have only brought up that the neutrality has been questioned. Every article about a controversial/political public figure will have its neutrality "questioned" by someone. I can't tell if you are stating that the article is not neutral or just that others have stated so; if it is the former, please provide example(s).
• With respect to the issue of length, as you said yourself WP:Article length is a suggestion. WP:GAR states that compliance with the Manual of Style not covered by the GA criteria and therefore not grounds for delisting.

I'd appreciate it if you could provide specific instances of where this article fails the GA criteria. I also note that WP:GAR says that the individual reassessment should be used if You don't see any ongoing content dispute or edit war, which was not the case. I believe a community reassessment is more appropriate. userdude 19:35, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

• See WP:GAFAIL: Immediate fail: It is not stable due to edit warring on the page;
• It also fails the following 2 of the 6 GA criteria:

4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.

5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

And as I explained in detail above, it has a level of PP which is further proof of its instability. It is not the same article that was reviewed 12 years ago. Instability is a symptom of NPOV issues. Without the PP and DS, what do you think would happen? Suggestion - if you are so confident about the article's stability, then submit a request to have the PP and DS restrictions removed, and renominate it for GA. It's that simple. _Talk 📧 20:52, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Instead of asserting that you are correct, please provide specific instance(s) of where this article is not neutral. I am unaware of any rule that GAs may not be protected. User:Aircorn said The stability criteria is more a practical criteria for reviewers, thus WP:GAFAIL#4 should not be applied to GARs. As I said, the edit warring was due to an unusual circumstance that has since been resolved by an RFC. I would find it wholly inappropriate if this GAR were to be closed now as delist — it should not be an individual reassessment for the reason stated above. userdude 21:21, 21 April 2020 (UTC); edited 21:23, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Instability is a reason not to pass an article (again mainly for practical reasons), but not in itself a reason to delist. Otherwise any current good article that undergoes an edit war or disagreement (which are a lot) would suddenly need to be delisted. Even worse it opens the door to editors deliberately making an article unstable so they can delist it. Normal editing practices (which in this case appears to be a content dispute that turned into an edit war and now is being resolved by RFC) are not grounds to delist. In fact the Good Article process gives precedent to community consensus. So if there is community consensus established through a RFC, no matter how egregious that may appear to some, then it has to be accepted as good enough to meet the Good Article criteria. Nothing presented here has really explained how it fails the criteria. It is all very well to say it is not neutral, but examples need to be given. Protection in itself is not proof of anything apart from that the article is attracting disruptive editing. I tend to agree that this should have gone through the community process, although that can be a bit hit and miss at the moment. If someone want to challenge Atsmes close the could take it there themselves after the close. AIRcorn (talk) 23:30, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Atsme, I am the editor that brought it to GA way back when and I was the editor who kept it there for the next seven years, until I stepped away from these kinds of high-profile active political articles. I do not believe the promotion to GA was dubious and I believe it warranted its GA status for the whole time I was minding it. (I have 160 combined FA/GA/DYK credits and so I think I know something about reviewed content.) As for stability and edit-warring and NPOV claims and page protection, that comes with the territory with these kinds of articles and it has never prevented articles of this kind achieved reviewed status. Indeed, Barack Obama was FA through both his presidential elections and presidency, John McCain was FA throughout his presidential election in 2008, and the same was true for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016 (I was involved in several of these). I can assure you there were always people, from both sides, complaining about the neutrality of each of these articles. That's almost the definition of neutrality – big fans will think it's too hard on the subject and big opponents will think it's too soft on the subject. I can't really speak to the current state of the article, but in my view the grounds you have for taking the GA away are not sufficient. Better would be to point out concrete, specific things wrong with it and see if those can be remedied. In my time doing these kinds of articles that was always a big frustration – people would complain in generalities but rarely list out specific, actionable points. Wasted Time R (talk) 22:40, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

• Delist - Per WP:GAFAIL points 3 & 4. The article still has maintenance tags Joe Biden#First term (2009–2013) and is far from stable with big changes and some edit warring. PackMecEng (talk) 22:59, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Decision

• The arguments to keep do not align with GA's core set of editorial standards. At the bare minimum, a good article should be neutral, stable, free of maintenance tags, and should not omit any major facets of the topic. An article is an immediate fail when there's edit warring but this one goes much further and has resulted in full or semi-PP, and DS restrictions of 1 revert per 24 hrs. A GA is exactly what its name implies - a good article, but when there is edit warring, disruption, NPOV issues and instability the article is clearly not good. Also, a GA should not be so long that it is unwieldy and difficult to read. This article is currently at 88 kB (14495 words) vs the 2008 GA article that was promoted at 31 kB (5122 words), so no, it is not the same article that was promoted over a decade ago. The delist arguments were the strongest and most convincing in support of delisting. _Talk 📧 01:48, 22 April 2020 (UTC)