Talk:Iraqi Air Force/GA1

GA Review

Hi! I will be reviewing this article for GA status, and should have the full review up within a few hours. Dana boomer (talk) 17:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   • I would suggest that the "Aircraft Inventory" subsection and the "Unknown Inventory" section be placed in a section together. I would title the section "Aircraft Inventory", with "Unknown Inventory" as a subsection.

   Why are the Dassault Super Etendard's still in the 'Unknown inventory' section if they were given back?

   Yeah they should be removed from the 'Unknown inventory' section.

   • Section titles should be uncapitalized except for the beginning word and any names. Therefore, "1970s and the Yom Kippur War" is correct, "Order of battle" is correct, but "Aircraft Inventory" is incorrect.
   • There should be no external links in the body of the article itself, such as there are in the Air Force Commanders section. These should either be formatted as references, moved to an External links section, or removed alltogether.
   • One or two sentence paragraphs should either be expanded or combined with other sections.
   • I have not done a complete check of the prose, due to the severity of the referencing problems. When most of the referencing has been taken care of, I will do a second run-through of the article to catch any prose problems.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   • My biggest concern with this article is the references, both inadequate references and incorrectly formatted references.
   • References are needed:

   • The first paragraph of the History section.
   • The last sentence of the 1940s subsection.
   • All of the first and third paragraphs and the last half of the second paragraph of the 1950s and early 1960s section.
   • The last sentence of the Six-Day War section.
   • All of the first and third paragraphs and all but the first sentence of the second paragraph of the 1970s and the Yom Kippur War section.
   • All but the first sentence of the first and second paragraphs of the 1980s- War with Iran section.
   • The last sentence of the first and third paragraphs and all of the second, third and fifth thru last paragraphs of the 1990s- Gulf War and no-fly zones section.
   • The last sentence of the first paragraph in the Operation Iraqi Freedom - 2003 section.
   • The third, fourth, six and seventh commanders in the Air Force commanders section.
   • The first three paragraphs of the Post- Invasion to Present section.
   • The fifth and sixth squadrons in the Order of battle section.
   • The references in the Aircraft Inventory section are confusing to me. You have refs in three different columns, and I have a feeling that not all of the information is referenced. Please make sure that everything is referenced, and try to put refs in as few columns as possible.
   • The entire Unknown Inventory section
   • Reference #6 is dead....try the Web archive.

   • Now, on to formatting:

   • References should follow, not precede, punctuation.
   • All web references should have an access date
   • Web references should be formatted so that the title is the link, rather than having the title and then a bare link.
   • All web references should have a publisher, as well as an author if available.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   While I tried to find NPOV, I doubt that I got it all...please ensure that there are no mentions of such things as "obsolete" aircraft without references, no things such as "embarrassing" losses of aircraft w/o refs, "The Iraqi Air Force had another trick up its sleeve" is NPOV (in 6-Day War section)........etc.

   When I was copy-editing, parts of the article seemed like (to me) that they were biased toward Iraq. Then it was biased toward Iran. I tried to do what I could, but...

   ...I missed stuff, I'm sure (I'm in the middle of a FAC for The Sword of Shannara) and I think that I already dealt with the "embarrassing" NPOV part, but you get the general idea.

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

   • This article appears fairly stable. However, there have been several changes to aircraft numbers by various registered users and an anon IP since the nominating editor last edited. Since the references in this section are confusing to me (see the comments above), I'm not sure if these changes are accurate or simply vandalism or good faith but wrong edits. Please check this.

6. 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):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

This article has some fairly serious referencing problems. I am putting the article on hold so that these concerns can be addressed. If you have any questions, you can ask here on the review page or on my talk page. Feel free to check off or otherwise comment on the points above as you resolve them. Dana boomer (talk) 18:08, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

This should not be a GA unless major improvements are made...this actually should have been a quick-fail...It requires many, many more references. the_ed17 22:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I generally choose not to quick fail an article unless it is completely unworthy of GA status; for example, if it is still a stub, or something else equally ridiculous. While I agree that this article does need a lot of TLC before it becomes GA, I have seen articles that were in worse shape than this one become something very close to FA status within only a few days when a dedicated group of editors take the review to heart and work hard on the article. If the editors decide not to do the work required to get the article to GA status, the review is always there as suggestions for another editor to work on at some point in the future. Just doing a review of the sort I have done above takes very little time - 45 minutes at the most. If you notice, I have a disclaimer above saying that I haven't fully reviewed the prose (which is generally what takes the most time in a review), and I will only do so when the article is almost fully referenced. If the article gets to that point, I will be more than happy to review the prose...if not, no skin off my nose and very little time wasted.

While WP is a community of editors and various viewpoints who work together towards consensus, I am the lead reviewer for the GA review of this article, and so I will leave the article on hold for another few days until I can be sure that either work is continuing on the article or nothing is being done. Dana boomer (talk) 23:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

First: Alright, you have very good reasons for your actions, and I now find myself agreeing with them. Second: I'm sorry for butting in on this GA. Third: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to try to tell you what to do with your GA-review... My apoligies, the_ed17 00:11, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

No problem on the "butting in". I do it myself on occasion :) I also apologize if I got a little hot under the collar...I probably shouldn't play around on WP when I'm annoyed with my RL... :P Please feel free to contribute to either the article or the review as much as you wish. I noticed that you placed a POV tag on the top of the article... I didn't notice POV problems, but this is probably because I didn't actually read the prose very thoroughly, just skimmed checking for major stuff. If you have specific examples of POV stuff, please feel free to list them above under the #4 and change the icon to a question mark. The same goes for other stuff that I may have missed. Thanks for your help on the article! Dana boomer (talk) 00:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Gee thanks for crushing my spirit the ed17. I will add the references later. Was it TRUELY NESSASARY TO ADD ALL THOSE TAGS?--EZ1234 (talk) 07:24, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that The Ed was trying to "crush your spirit". Instead, the tags help to see where the article needs the most work. In reality, as soon as whatever the tags refer to is fixed, you can remove them. Dana boomer (talk) 12:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I apologize; I was just slightly annoyed when I wrote my first comment on here. However, you do need references to the history that you are giving in this article; otherwise, how does anyone know that it's true? Can you understand where I am coming from? It also needs to be neutral, meaning that it cannot be biased toward any one side; encyclopedias are meant to present information and allow the readers to conclude their own conclusion...a biased article does not do that. Anyway, if you need my help on something EZ1234, just leave me a message, and I'll do what I can...My apologies again. the_ed17 13:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up, I will be adding the rest of the refs soon. Cheers--EZ1234 (talk) 13:33, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, when you get a chance, format your web references like I did on ref number's 1-5...also see the {{cite journal}} and {{cite book}} templates. the_ed17 04:40, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I am going to have to fail this GA nom. There has been very little work done on the article, especially over the past few days, and there are still major issues with referencing, references and MOS. I hope to see the article at GAN again when these issues have been addressed! Dana boomer (talk) 18:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess its fair. I will attempt to complete what is needed to be done and will renominate the article Thanks for your time Dana boomer --EZ1234 (talk) 08:04, 5 September 2008 (UTC)