Talk:Top Gear (2002 TV series)/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch
Hi, I'll be reviewing this article. After a quick read I think it looks really good, although of course I may have some suggestions for improvement.

I usually do reviews in 3 stages:

• coverage, structure and flow.
• the nitty-gritty stuff including refs, style, copyediting and copyright status of images.
• lead - once the main content is all OK.

Here my comments, excluding the lead. --Philcha (talk) 17:10, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Coverage

I see no glaring omissions, and I'm a fan.

Structure

The large-scale structure is good. A handful of items should probably be moved, I'll deal with that in the detailed review of sections.

The lead currently has some items not mention in the main text - see WP:LEAD

• Viewing figures.
• "most pirated"
• "Series 12 began transmission on 2 November 2008..."
• "Columnist A. A. Gill described the show as ...". It might be useful to retitle the "Criticism" section to "Praise and criticisms", put Gill's commnet (and any others) under a sub-heading "Praise" and then give the paras about "irresponsible driving", "too many supercars" and "environmental damage their own sub-headings.
• "Groups such as the Environmental Investigation Agency have accused the BBC of allowing the Top Gear team to cause damage" - guess where this should go :-)
• "NBC is holding the American version for broadcast in February or March, 2009, as a possible mid-season replacement" should be used to explain similar comments later in the article.

General comment re refs

I'm already finding lots of items that need refs, more relevant refs, more reliable refs, etc. Wikipedia's attitude about refs has hardened a lot in the last year. A dodgy ref invites someone - possibly an environmentalist critic of the programme - to slap {{fact}} or other "maintenance" tags on the article, and a GA can be delisted pretty quickly for that sort of thing. {{fact}} and other "maintenance" tags put articles into categories that attract grouches like a jam jar attracts wasps. After all the work you've put into the article and I'm putting into the review, we'd all be pretty upset if that happened.

Please ensure that all refs use Citation templates and that all URLs are accompanied by "accessdate" params (yyyy-mm-dd, incl leading 0s).

Web links in refs

The link checker report on this artcile shows several dead or doubtful links, plus links for which some required information is missing (see Citation templates).

In the link checker's report, any code other than 200 is suspect. 301 or 302 may mean that the site's reorganised and has returned a new URL for the same content, or it may mean they've deleted the content and redirected to their home page. If you click the link in the report, it opens a scrollable pane that shows the content displayed by the redirected URL.

I use this link checker when preparing articles for review, and it's so useful that I keep a link to it on my User page.

If a web page that you really need has vanished, try Internet Archive's WayBackMachine. If you use items from this, the citations must have "archiveurl" and "archivedate" parameters. Citation templates provides instructions.

History

• Ref(s) needed for story of the show's resurrection, incl Clarkson's pitch for revised format.
• Ref(s) needed for venue. Dunsfold Aerodrome and Dunsfold Park are adverts and are not specifically relevant to Top Gear, but may be useful to show that it's in Waverley, Surrey. Dunsfold Aerodrome also break the browswer's "Back" button, number 1 in the 7 deadly web sins; if used, this link shoudl have a warning.
• Ref(s) needed for all points in 2nd para (begins "The new series format incorporates a number of major changes from the old show ...").
• I've copyedited "rejected by the community" (Enstone) to "rejected by West Oxfordshire council" because "community" is ambiguous in popular culture - could refer to forums, blogs, etc.
• Ref(s) needed for "with a revamped studio set, a new car for the "Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car" segment, and the inclusion of one of Hammond's dogs, named "Top Gear Dog", in a few studio and film segments of that series".
• Ref(s) needed for "the final episode of the series had 8 million viewers — BBC Two's highest ratings for a decade"
• Ref(s) needed for "A special programme, Top Gear: Polar Special, was broadcast in the UK on 25 July 2007 ..." The ref given deals mainly with environmentalist criticisms - nothing about the trip, when it was made, when it was broadcast, etc.
• Ref(s) needed for "On 9 September 2007, Top Gear participated in the 2007 Britcar 24-hour race at Silverstone ..."
• I dont' see how http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chrismoyles/galleries/2877/30/#gallery2877 supports "in Series 11 there will be a new "occasional regular host".
• What does "trying to calm down the prog-rock side" mean? It may be what the guy saud, but it's media-speak, and a translation into English is needed (including by me!).
• I think "The show has won several awards ..." would be better in the "Awards" section of the article.  Done Moved LicenseFee (talk) 19:22, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Broadcasts

• This section and its subsections have hardly any refs, and need quite a few.
• As the sub-heading "Episodes" has no content, I suggest retitling it "Regular Episodes", and moving it and its "Further info" line just above the para beginning "For their initial broadcasts, new episodes of Top Gear are shown in ..." Please comment!

Races

• Whole section lacks good refs. Refs to other WP articles are not accepted. If these other articles have good and relevant refs, reproduce them here.
• Some copyediting needed, I'll do this later.

Challenges

• No refs at all in this section!

Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car

• No refs at all in this section!

Power Laps

• The ref Top Gear Power Laps in this section does not explain the rules.
• Re the Bugatti Veyron's absence, the ref is dated 2006 - needs an update.
• "Clarkson made an appeal to Veyron owners to let Top Gear borrow their car and allow The Stig to drive it around the track, offering up to £30 to do so" (2007) needs a ref.
• "The Veyron is due is set a lap time around the track on the 23rd November 2008 edition" needs a ref.
• "The car that recorded the fastest lap time on the Top Gear track was ..." needs a ref.
• All other points in this section need refs.

The Cool Wall

• No refs at all in this section!

Unusual reviews

• All the items need refs.
• Would it be possible to group them by sub-topic? E.g. "toughness", "off-road ability", etc. Even better might be use a sortable table so readers can order / group the tests according to what interests them, see Alexander_Alekhine#Summary_of_results_in_competitions for an example of how this looks to a reader. Help:Table#Sorting provides instructions. Suggested columns: date or series+episode; category; car tested; description (not sortable); result.
• What about the results of these challenges, e.g. "pass" / "fail"? E.g. Clarkson lost the Challenger Tank vs Range Rover Sport test.

Taken all out - the information is already on list of Top Gear Episodes anyway.  Done LicenseFee (talk) 19:22, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, and a nice selection of examples. A couple things about the sources, though:

• Strictly speaking the show's own video clips are not the best sources as WP:RS prefers independent secondary sources. Can you find any?
• Naked URLs are not acceptable, see Template:Cite web#Required parameters. --Philcha (talk) 20:00, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Significant cars

• Whole section needs refs.
• In this section the table format wastes a lot of space and make an unnecessary "wall" between the reader and the next section. How about an "inline list", e.g.
  Ford Escort RS1800 (Series One, Episode Two)—Citroën DS (Series One, Episode Three)—Bentley T2 (Series Two, Episode One)—etc.?
• Retitle "Significant older cars"?

Car of the Year

• Whole section needs refs.
• How about an "inline list" layout for this? The lsit will get longer as the series continues (as we all hope it will).

Ownership survey

• Whole section needs refs.

Ending credits

• The refs given describe the episodes named, but do not mention the joke names.
• No refs for "Polar Special" or "America Challenge".

Soundtrack

• Whole section needs refs.
• I'd make the table float to the right of the text, to save screen space. It would then need a caption.

DVD and CD releases

• Whole section needs refs.

Awards and nominations

• Ref needed for " In the episode where the presenters showed the award to the studio audience, Clarkson joked that ..."
• Other refs gone AWOL, see link checker report.
• Refs needed for para beginning "Top Gear presenters have also announced on the show that they have won some slightly lower profile awards ..."

Criticism

• Ref(s) needed for "not featuring enough "affordable" cars, ... turns it into a joke"
• The ref for "causing ecological damage" covers only one case. There are already refs for such criticisms of e.g. the "Polar Expedition", and these should be included here too. Instead of a row of 5 or more separate refs after this phrase, you could bundle all the citations into one ref, see e.g. 4x#cite_note-4Xfulldefinition-1.
• Ref(s) needed for "favouring performance over fuel efficiency and conservation".
• "Clarkson voiced his opinion that the BBC did not take Top Gear seriously" (in the February 2006 issue of Top Gear Magazine) is not supported by the ref, which simply complains that the programme is pushed out of schedules by snooker and football.
• The same ref does not support "despite Top Gear having considerably higher viewing figures" but says, "... there simply isn't enough space left for the sort of television programme normal people might actually want to watch."

Allegations of racism

• The same ref that supports "BMW = Nazis" also supports alleged racist comments about various Orientals. Refs are hard enough to find, milk them!

Allegations of homophobia

Looks OK.

United States

• No ref support "holding it as a spring/summer season replacement" - whatever that means.

Fixed. Found a ref and added it to the article. _{El Greco}^(talk) 17:19, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Australia

Looks OK.

Russia

Looks OK.

Discussion

"Groups such as the Environmental Investigation Agency have accused the BBC of allowing the Top Gear team to cause damage" - guess where this should go :-)
Just wanted to say, I did move that part to the criticisms page, but someone reverted it. TopGearFreak ^Talk 19:49, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I meant the "Criticisms" section (or "Praise and criticisms") of this article. Once we get al th econten tin the right places, we can look at possible summarisation. --Philcha (talk) 22:11, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm failing this article myself as a GA reviewer. It's been nearly a month and there's still a good deal of work to be done. Wizardman 02:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

- - - - - please post review comments & responses above this line - - - - -