Talk:Time Lord/GA1

GA Reassessment

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

I am individually assessing this article. It is an older GA, which may not meet the current GA criteria. From a scan of the current version it is reasonable to at least reassess. The article was promoted March 10, 2007. –Whitehorse1 18:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Overview

I've now read through the article, assessing against the GA criteria linked above. For reassessments generally a hold period (typically something like 5 or 7 days) is allowed to make any necessary tweaks, fixes or polishes to issues identified during the review.

The problems within the article, in respect of the criteria, are significant enough that I must delist it as a Good Article at this point.

There is original research throughout the article; it forms a significant part of the whole content. This tends to be in-universe fan speculation, in the form of quoting or referencing an occurrence or line within an episode then drawing a couple of suggested conclusions for it. I'll illustrate with some examples below. Even if editors were to figuratively go through the content with a red pen, other substantial issues also need attention. The substantial reworking necessary to bring this to the required criteria is not realistically likely during a short hold period. On that basis I am delisting with information for future improvements below. –Whitehorse1 20:25, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Prose

• The lead does not adequately summarize the key points of the main article body.
• Many weasel words such as "suchandsuch are normally considered" are used.
• The layout suffers from a common problem articles using summary style experience over time. Frequently edited and perhaps less maintained articles split of content to a subarticle, then gradually more is added to the section in the parent article until it's full length on its own (overlong), and doesn't particularly summarize the spun off subarticle. The readable prose size of the regeneration summary article is 25kb, though the Regeneration section in this parent article is 5.4k, almost 900 words. The History of the Time Lords subarticle prose size is 16 kB, though History within the show here is as much as 4k+.
• There is little out-of-universe focus as required under the guideline for writing on fiction.
• The list likely doesn't meet requirements for list incorporation. It's a long bulleted list of character names, with scattered entries getting referenced to an episode or other media. It also seems indiscriminate, not giving any indication for which Time Lords are included in the partial list.

Factually accurate and verifiable

• There is a lot of original research. Lots of weasel words are used to incorporate the original research. One example from an episode's mentioned allergy to aspirin is "It is not known whether this is a, b, or c." Another method used is phrases like "it is implied", "may refer to", "appear to", and so many things are "suggested" or "hinted" at as here: "the Doctor hints at a kind of shared consciousness among Time Lords when he comments of the Master: "He's a Time Lord. In many ways, we have the same mind." Which could simply mean those who grew up in the same environment naturally had shared experiences, which helped shape them. Or: "The Outsiders have often been equated with the "Shobogans", a group mentioned briefly in The Deadly Assassin^{[29 (ep. ref)]} as being responsible for acts of vandalism around the Panopticon, but there is actually nothing on screen that explicitly connects the two."
• Sourcing is poor, with almost no analysis from secondary sources or real-world perspective background information. I found no reliable sources, that are not primary sources. There are many cited episodes (plus one audio story), all books are Eighth Doctor Adventures, Virgin Books, or Virgin New/Missing Adventures; there's a blogpost, an imdb link used to mention the 1996 movie; there's also a comic book, and the Doctor Who Annual 2006. (A book ("AHistory: An Unauthorised History of the Doctor Who Universe") appears as the only References section bulleted item. While I don't know how useful it might be for writing a solid article, there's no clear indication how or if it was used at all, in this article.)

Broad, yet focused

• Lots of fannish focus on large volumes of small details noticed over the years is present. Again, the OR and sourcing probably ties in here.

Neutral

• Not really applicable. Many represented viewpoints seem those of individual editors.

Images

• Images feedback:
  • History within the show section contains an image captioned "The Dark Tower in the Death Zone on Gallifrey". Its rationale states "The image is significant because they show an important structure that is integral to the plot of the episode in question." There's little discussion of the episode in the article and hardly any in that section. It's purely decorative. Any non-free image must significantly increase understanding of the article text, being used in the context of critical commentary.
  • Regeneration section: The regeneration animated gif is an example for which there is a strong case for its inclusion, since it's a unusual concept. The fair-use rationales are a bit weak though, with the one for this article vaguely saying "used for informational purposes about the lead character"; one for another article on the file page is a touch better. All would benefit from strengthening and cleanup; the article's text could also make better use of them.
  • The cardiovascular system screenshot falls short of meeting fair-use guidelines currently. The sole reference in the article section containing the image seems to be "Other physiological differences from humans include two hearts (which normally beat at 170 beats a minute)", and the image page has a please reduce size notice on it.
  • A strong case for including the image (Prydonian.jpg) at the top of the article exists. That image also has a reduce size notice, however. The "Culture and society" section is probably the one most closely related to the image. It's fair-use rationale could be strengthened: The user (khaosworks) that supplied it showed a degree of familiarity with their use, as it does use relevant terminology, surpasses those of the other images, however its statements are somewhat vague.

Result: Delisted.