Talk:Valley of the Kings/GA1

GA Reassessment

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed.

I have found the article very interesting, and I think it contains a lot of good information. I did some minor copyediting (comma splices were a problem). The biggest issue is with sourcing. There are a few places where references should be added. I marked them with "citation needed" tags. These should be addressed in order to retain Good Article status.

Other problems include:

• A couple of references missing page numbers (these have been marked with "page number needed" tags).
• A few statements contain peacock terms (these have been marked with "neutrality disputed" tags).
• A couple of statements contain out-of-date information (these have been marked with "dated info" tags).
• A few sentences were difficult to understand (these have been marked with "clarify" tags).
• Do the hieroglyphics at the beginning of the "Royal Necropolis" section mean anything? If so, this should be clarified.
• A couple of the subsections ("Deir el-Medina" and "Mortuary Temples") are short and should be expanded or added to other sections.
  • Perhaps the headers could be removed and these could just be incorporated into the "Reoyal Necropolis" section. GaryColemanFan (talk) 21:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
    • Done. Markh (talk) 22:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
• The "Decoration" subsection contains a hidden note stating that it should be expanded. I agree that more information would be useful.
  • Just a thought...since there are so many tombs and this section would become too long if a lot of detail was added, would it make sense to add a note at the top that says something like, "For information about decoration in specific tombs, see the articles on the individual tombs"? That seems like it would be sufficient. Or do you believe that it's good as it is? GaryColemanFan (talk) 06:14, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
    • Note: This point has been addressed through dialogue on talk pages. GaryColemanFan (talk) 16:51, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
• The lead section should summarize the whole article. For an article of this length, it should be three to four paragraphs long.
• Some of the internet references are missing important information. At minumim, they should contain the title, publisher, url and accessdate. If a publication date or author is available, this information should also be included.
• Consistency is needed in the book references. Some have p.1 (with no space), some have p. 1 (with a space), and some have p 1 (with no period). Most have the period and the space, so this is probably the best one to go with.
• Consistency with "work" vs. "publisher" is needed in the internet references.
• A few of the reference links need to be updated, as the URLs have changed (Introduction to the Deir el-Medina Database, Amarna Royal Tombs Project, Another new tomb in the Valley of the Kings: ‘KV64’, and VOKF Foundation).
• Image:Horemheb tomb entrance.png should be replaced with the identical image from Wikimedia Commons.
  • I was going to do this myself, but both images have exactly the same name, so I have no idea if this is even possible. It's not really a problem, though, so I wouldn't hold up the review because of this. GaryColemanFan (talk) 21:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
• More descriptive captions should be used for the images that just have the tomb number (eg. KV6).
• The first paragraph in the "Tourism" section is an exact copy of http://egypt.drakosha.com.ru/luxor.php, although I can't tell which site wrote it and which site copied it.

At least part of the http://egypt.drakosha.com.ru/luxor.php link is lifted from this article's tourist section, as I wrote some of it. Markh (talk) 22:13, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I sourced the paragraph, so we can consider this point resolved. GaryColemanFan (talk) 05:26, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

If these concerns are not addressed, the article will be delisted. I realize that this is a lot of work, so I am willing to extend the one-week hold if progress is being made. If anyone has questions about the concerns I have addressed, please bring them up here (or contact me on my talk page). Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 00:12, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I have started to work on the above, starting with the citations and peacock terms. Markh (talk) 08:51, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Like I said, this review can stay open as long as some work is being done. I'll try to help out where I can. GaryColemanFan (talk) 16:06, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting out the publisher bit, I will have a look at the other bits now. Markh (talk) 22:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Wow! I'm really impressed with all the extra work Markh put in to add more footnotes. I passed this article for GA in the first place, knowing that Markh had talent, and now feel very reassured. I came very close to reverting all of GaryColemanFan's fact tagging, a practice which I hope [s]he doesn't continue as it was totally excessive. Although there are a plethora (read: too many) of inline comment tags such as {{fact}} and {{huh}} etc. extensive and detailed commentary on specific passages goes better on the talk page or on the reassessment page imo. But I'm glad Markh responded and added so many. Well done! Regards, dvdrw 02:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Markh has indeed done a great job, and I'm impressed as well. As for the reassessment, I have participated in several GARs and FARs, and I understand that some people get upset when concerns are brought up. I haven't seen a reassessment yet that didn't annoy somebody. I decided to place the fact, dated info, clarify, and page number needed tags to show the specific places that needed work. One of the big criticisms that often comes up in reassessments is a lack of specific feedback in these areas. For example, an editor will say, "There are many unreferenced paragraphs." The contributors to the article almost always get upset at such a vague comment and generally request that the reviewer place fact tags. I decided to go straight to the fact tags, both because of these experiences and because I think it helps editors see what the end goal is (ie. when the tags are addressed, the concern is resolved vs. adding more and more references and hoping that it will eventually satisfy the reviewer)...and no, I don't intend to add more tags. I'm not sure if the concern is simply that there were a lot of tags or if it's that you don't believe all of that information needed to be cited. As far as I can tell, very little of it is common knowledge, so I believe requesting citations was appropriate. I appreciate the fact that you chose not to remove the tags without addressing the concerns they represented, as I am hoping to work with the editors rather than against them. I requested that anyone who had questions or concerns bring them up here, as I'm quite willing to be flexible on some issues. The goal of the GA sweeps, as with any project on Wikipedia, is to improve articles, and I hope I've made it clear that this is my intent. I have no problem with helping fix any article as long as at least one other editor is working on it as well, and I will never delist an article if work is being done. As it stood, the article may have met the criteria when it was promoted two years ago, but it did not meet the current criteria. I have no doubt that some editors would have delisted it immediately because of the reference concerns, so I hope you can see that I have the best of intentions in this reassessment. I recognize that there is always room for growth, however, so please feel free to get in touch with any feedback (positive and/or negative). Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 06:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

As a note, this article has previously been through GAC (twice) and FAC, an no-one has responded with the detailed points above, so it has been a constructive process. I think there is more that can be added still, but this is a good place to start. If I could nail down the intro, that would be even better! Markh (talk) 09:20, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I am satisfied that all of these points have been addressed and that substantial improvements have been made to the article, so I am closing this reassessment and keeping the article listed as a GA. GaryColemanFan (talk) 16:51, 9 August 2008 (UTC)