Talk:Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Sadads (talk) 15:43, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

Unfortunately I have to fail this article for several reasons which cannot be solved in a short amount of time. First and foremost, the article relies almost solely upon the publications of the Union of International Associations which means that the content is not reliable secondary sources for use in as references to verify information. Currently it reads like an informational blurb for a the encyclopedia, not a Nuetral encyclopedia article. Additionally, the article focuses too much on the content of the encyclopedia and hardly covers more pertinent information such as the publication history and the critical reception of the work, as well as the scholarly context in relationship to the UAI and other international discussions. Also, the footnotes are very poorly formated, for more information about footnote formatting, see Wikipedia:Citing sources. I encourage you to consider revising the article in order to meet more of these criteria. If anything is unclear or if you have questions feel free to leave them here or on the article's talk page I will be watching both. However, I do not see this article being ready for GA status in a resasonable amount of time. Happy editing, and I am sorry to have to fail this review, Sadads (talk) 15:54, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Sadads. Your assessment looks fair enough to me. I do have one question: where, specifically, is the article failing on "MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists"? With regard to secondary sources, you are right, most problems are linked to their lack. I don't think there exist much other sources than those mentioned in the article references, but there could be a way to change the perception by systematically pointing to the sources outside of the UIA rather than using, like I did, the UIA pages citing those sources. That is true mainly for 'reviews' of the Encyclopedia, which are more or less the only secondary sources that I know of. It might well be the case that those reviews would suffice to give the impression of verifiability, and to cover the aspects that you mention: publication history, critical reception, scholarly context. All this is linked somehow to the footnotes, whose formatting I should learn. For the rest, I agree with you that the article reads too much like an informational blurb, but I would not say that it focuses too much on the content, or that info such as publication history, etc, is more pertinent than the content. I understand the kind of balance you are asking for, and I thank you again for your care. --Robert Daoust (talk) 22:27, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On the MOS stuff, first the lead isn't long enough per WP:Lead. Second the section "Databases, entries, and interlinks" could be much more prosy, and cover things with more summary and less explicit fact listing. Additionally, the reference stuff I mentioned is relevant to MOS. Your paragraphs sometimes get long too (but that is a silly thing, which is easy to clean up :P). Also, the section "Notes and commentaries within the Encyclopedia projects" is a little too detailed and doesn't give weight to the content at the same level with the commentary on the content. I would suggest suggest giving the content as much weight as most reviews and discussions would: less then 1/3-1/2, instead focusing on implications and history, etc. Sadads (talk) 00:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]