Talk:London Borough of Croydon/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

GA Review

I've taken on this article for review under the Good Article criteria, as nominated on the Good Article candidates page. I've been categorizing the article and making substantial improvments for a long time and belive that it's up to the GA standard. If you have any questions then feel free to leave a message on my talk page. Pafcool2 16:20, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm now just going to hold back the review, while I try to rename some of the sections and add in more information about the subject including History, to be in line with Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements. Pafcool2 16:23, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

That is a guideline, not Gospel, adjust the to local needs. My comment would that some of the sections - e.g. politics are overly lengthy, without showing much information. Some of that material could be dealt with in detail in an external article and summarised here (it's Wiki, after all). (Also, see my point about having two long lists of schools in the article).

• You will need to pay particular attention to reference format (Labour Market Profile shows all the required details, the others are deficient).
• History may help with extending details on the borough's history.

Good luck Kbthompson 16:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I didn't know someone had previously reviewed this because they didn't mark it as being on hold at WP:GAC (only on the talk page, which I didn't check before looking at the article text). Anyway, after reviewing the article, I don't think this article meets the existing Good Article criteria at this time, so it cannot be listed. In fact, there are some very significant issues with the organization and content, and I don't think that placing the article on hold (which is generally for a period of one week or less) will help address all of these issues, so instead, this article will be listed as failed. It can be renominated at WP:GAC once all of the issues are addressed.

First, the lead section is too short. The lead should be an adequate summary of the article; a good lead is probably 2-3 paragraphs. See WP:LEAD for tips on improving this section and writing a good introduction.

Second, referencing (citations) are way too inadequate. Several sections are unsourced, and most other sections have largely unattributed information. Per guidelines, any information that is challenged or could be challenged, needs to have a source, preferably using inline citations. This include any figures and hard data. The references themselves should also include more information than just the external link. Full citation information should be included in inline citations (e.g. author, title, publisher, date of publication, date of retrieval for web references). This is so that, if the link disappears, the reference is not rendered completely useless and could be used to track down and verify the information.

The geography section has some serious organizational issues. There's too many subsection headers and short sections. Demographics (demography) is usually not included under the geography section, and usually goes in a separate section. Postal codes are usually not considered very encyclopedic, as you can look these up in an almanac of on the web, and really don't tell us anything about the city. 'Parks and green spaces' really doesn't go under geography either; it can go in its own section, or in a section with sports & recreational activities. The geography section could use a description of roads, highways, and layout.

Consider renaming the 'croydon council' section to 'government' or 'administration'. The section is also poorly organized, also with too many subsection headers. The tables in the section break up the text and make it hard to read. They also don't really tell us much; it's very trivial to tell us merely that conservatives or labour party candidates won an election, without actually telling us the candidate. Who cares? Listing all of the council members is largely unnecessary, too -- and the table doing it is way too long! I don't know what to make of the 'councillors' section? What are they? What are their significance? This section is too short and the table doesn't tell me anything; plus, it looks a bit too flashy with the graphics in it.

Move the discussion of education and health out into their own sections, and not in 'community facilities'. It is usually not necessary to list all K-12 schools in cities, towns, and boroughs, and not a GA-class attribute. Lists are highly discourage unless absolutely necessary. It may be better to move these lists to another page, or link to a list of schools in the greater city of London, not just a page listing schools in one borough.

The 'religion' section is way too short, and contains an 'under construction' tag, which is a HUGE red flag for GA status. This MUST be addressed.

The 'sport and leisure' subsection seems pretty well written, well sourced, and well covered. Recommend moving this into its own main section. Throw the material on parks into this section, and that would be good.

Move 'crime' to the demographics section.

Combine 'economy' and 'industry and commerce' into one main section. I would also recommend promoting the section; a good order of sections, at least for the beginning of the article, is: intro, history, geography, demographics, economy,... The economy section also has zero references.

'Shopping and Exhibitions' is just a list of shopping centers. Barely notable. You might want to have a 'culture' section, which includes a description of some cultural attractions as well as some of the major shopping centers and streets. This should be written as prose, not a list, though. Lists are generally a characteristic of B-class articles, not GA. 'Places of interest' and 'districts' are also just lists.

The media section looks reasonably good; recommend getting rid of the two subsection headers, as they're not really necessary here. The 'future' section could be merged into the 'history' section, near the end.

It might be wise to move the list of famous people near the end to a separate List of famous people from Croydon article. These lists tend to be very long, and it's difficult to get citations for each individual. They also tend to be vandalized more often as well. It's best to put these in separately linked articles.

The 'see also' section is a bit long. Links in this section should only be for links that are not previously mentioned in the article text beforehand, so that might get rid of a few links.

It would be very helpful to review information in the manual of style, as there are several copyediting and wikifying issues in the article. I'd also look at WP:CITE and WP:LEAD. While the article is not necessarily a city itself, and just a part of one, it still might be useful to review the UK (and US) city examples provided at WP:CITIES.

Hope this helps improve the article. Cheers! Dr. Cash 06:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, very much for your comments on the article, this will really help me get along to addresing the major issues of the article. I've just finished puting in full references, as you suggested, and yesterday I had a major overhaul of the article addresing most of the lists and changing them into prose or into a different article. Plus i've cut down the see also and external links (which can now be seen on the Croydon page) sections which I agree were to long and contained some unencyclopedic links.

The main differences you will see is that the Districts section has gone in favor of Neighborhoods and areas which contains all the same information plus a small summary of the area and where it is located from Central Croydon. Other differences you will see is that the short sections in Geography has gone, in fact the whole of Geography has gone in favour of Geography and Climate (which now only contains 2 subsections, Climate and Neighborhoods and areas). Croydon Council has gone in favour of Governance and it now contains less headings, with some scraped altogether and some have been merged. The long table has also gone (although that can still be found on two other articles involving Croydon local elections), i thought of what you wrote and it really was annoying to scroll through all of it. Plus it probably belongs on the other pages than this one.

The 'glitzy' logo table under councillors is now gone and can be found under Wards and Councillors as a modest grey table. In education, the schools list has been absorbed into the newley formed Schools in Croydon article. And the underconstruction sign has gone from the Religion subheading - although to be fair the heading had only been there since the 23rd, a day before the review - has gone, and the subsection is much longer now. Plus as you suggested the fantastic Sport and Leisure section has been spawned into it's own section, which is looking great. I've decided not to merge Economy with Industry and Commernce as I feel they are seperate issues. Overall I'm glad that you've given me this information, and I will keep on editing to what you said. Thank You. Pafcool2 18:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Peer Review

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:What is a featured article?, Images should have concise captions.^[?]
• Please convert tables from HTML syntax to Help:Table wiki-markup.
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 000m², use 000 m², which when you are editing the page, should look like: 000 m².^[?]
• Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Wikipedia:Summary style.^[?]
• There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view.
  • it has been
  • might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).^[?]
• Please make the spelling of English words consistent with either American or British spelling, depending upon the subject of the article. Examples include: neighbour (B) (American: neighbor), meter (A) (British: metre), recognise (B) (American: recognize), criticize (A) (British: criticise), ization (A) (British: isation), isation (B) (American: ization), aging (A) (British: ageing), any more (B) (American: anymore).
• The script has spotted the following contractions: doesn't, don't, didn't, if these are outside of quotations, they should be expanded.
• As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]^[?]
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.^[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, APR _t 12:37, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Review by Chris.B

It's a good start, but I feel it may need some more work.

• As it stands now the lead section needs a slight expansion; some parts of article aren't summarised.
• Remember that all non-free content requires a proper fair use rationale: have a look at Image:Croydoncouncillogo.gif, Image:Choice-fm-logo.gif and Image:Couls purl.jpg. Some of which are used in breach of fair use.
• The overall layout of images looks somewhat cluttered. Consider making them all consistent by maintaining only the thumb attribute.
• "Croydon covers an area of 86.52 km²" What's that in miles squared?
• The article needs additional references. The "Neighbourhoods and areas" section is wholly unreferenced, as is most of the history section.
• It needs some minor formatting changes: e.g. "Geography and Climate" → "Geography and climate" and so forth. No need for caps.

Otherwise a very exhaustive article. Keep up the good work. -- Chris B • talk 16:55, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Comments by Ilse@

I think the non-free corporate logos and non-free images of buildings should be removed. Generally, all non-free use images need non-free media rationales to explain why the use is permitted. – Ilse@ 09:20, 1 November 2007 (UTC)