Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/England/1

England

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delist. Criterion 1,2 and 3 failings have been identified below, and remain unaddressed. Geometry guy 20:17, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

First, some background. A month or so ago the article was added as a GA nomination; in my view it was a premature nomination. I IAR-removed it, believing that was the most appropriate action. Just 6 days later it was placed back in the nominations queue; a reviewer passed the article. The article falls substantially short of meeting GA standards in my view.

• Fails criterion 1:
  • Has embedded lists in the form of lists or very listy prose. Sections like 'Engineering and innovation', 'Literature', 'Science and philosophy', 'Nomenclature', generally have had asterisks removed so they are no longer bulleted lists, and a few linking words (like "and") added, rather than been rewritten to prose. Mere listing of names with a mention of the field in which they worked is not sufficient.
  • It frequently includes standalone, orphaned sentences such as "The Church of England remains the official established church of England."

• Fails criterion 2:
  • It contains unusual - unreferenced - statements, like "Heart of Oak" is "often considered [an] unofficial English national anthem", which is uncited, nor is it reflected in the linked wikiarticle.
  • Many web references are not properly formatted lacking publishers and access dates.
  • It uses multiple citation methods outputting in different formats. The references section is disorganized.
  • It uses unreliable or poor quality sources:
    • There is excessive reliance on tertiary sources, which is unnecessary for a topic of this nature; this is done almost to the point of caricature, seemingly seeking to use as many online encyclopedia or dictionary resources as possible. (Encarta, Hutchinson, Britannica; OED, American Heritage Dictionary, Dictionary of Political Thought, Columbia Free Dictionary.)
    • It uses wikis anybody can edit, such as H2G2, and dubious resources like ecauldron.com forum, factmonster.com.

• Fails criterion 3 (broadness while staying focused):
  • It delves into minutiae, e.g. religion sections list multiple towns with some religions receiving more attention than others - apparently randomly.
  • Worse, it shows signs of having not been read through.
    • For example, it has a top-level section named "Nomenclature" that begins "The country is named after the Angles, one of several Germanic tribes who settled..." This might be okay, were it not for an earlier top-level section "Etymology and usage" that begins "England is named after the Angles, the largest of the Germanic tribes who settled..." When reading through an entire article, these things are picked up on ("didn't it mention that earlier?").
    • Another example is the "Geography, Major rivers" subsection, which is nothing more than sentence stating the country (about 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by water), has several rivers. It names a few scattered examples, and links to a list that is mainly redlinked river names. This provides little if any useful information to a reader.

There are many other problems within the article. –Whitehorse1 01:44, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: The GAR nominator raises some valid concerns above. I particularly agree that the article Fails criterion 2, as there are referencing issues throughout, and unsourced information which could use in-line cites. The reader/editor should not be made to assume that the info is sourced in the sub-articles being summarized. Cirt (talk) 22:10, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
• Comment: I was the original nominator, and I just thought I would pop along and explain why the article was passed. WP:WIAGA calls for 'clear' prose, and that is what I found. Yes, there are some areas, like the 'Rivers' section, that could be lists, but trying to turn the 'Cuisine' and 'Literature' sections into prose would result in a lot of writing to say very little, and the links within the lists are all that's required to demonstrate what the lists detail. Looking back on the article, there don't seem to be enough references, and I'm surprised that I passed the article in this state. The lack of references was noted in my original review, but there does not seem to have been much improvement. The repetition of the bit about Angles in the 'Etymology' and 'Nomenclature' sections is there on purpose, I believe; the majority of the names in 'Nomenclature' are based upon the word Angle, and so by highlighting the origin, the reader can appreciate the links between the various names. On re-reading the article, I would put it on hold, requesting the references be improved, and go from there - weebiloobil (talk) 12:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment I have been through & standardised many of the citation to use citation templates & moved the "notes" into a seperate section. I removed some broken links. I hope this is useful but I think it now shows even more clearly that several secions are uncited.— Rod ^talk 19:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

• Yours is a change done with the best of intentions, and in unequivocal good faith, but problematic. The referencing issues lie not with consistent use of any particular template. The problem, is outputting in different formats; article builders can use by-hand or template tools in combination, to provide referencing data as richly as possible. What matters is how they are used and customized; all too often, changing en masse helps not. I recognize your desire and effort to help. Nonetheless, the solution is not those adjustments. Please, revert the changes you made. –Whitehorse1 19:52, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I can revert to the version of the article before I tackled some of the template issues - however this would mean putting back broken links - which surely isn't good practice, and remixing references and notes. I recognise that many of the issues elated to do with citations in the article are not just about the format but the actual references used and the lack of citations in many sections. I was hoping that this would address some of the concerns expressed above "It uses multiple citation methods outputting in different formats. The references section is disorganized." which seemed to have general agreement. Do others feel the changes I made need to be reverted?— Rod ^talk 20:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Using a consitant citation format is always good, imo. But it is not a GA critrion (even though many reviewers always mention it), so it should not effect the review at all.YobMod 13:26, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Keep the notes and the references separate (ie: as they are now). The format of the references (ie: using {{citation}} or {{cite book}}/{{cite web}} needs to be consistent. Nev1 (talk) 15:40, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

comment At the moment i agree that article suffers all the problems identified by reviewers above. The listy prose is a minor problem compared to the lack of citations - having lived in England for 25 years, i am suprised to see assertions of facts i have never heard of no sources to back them up. Many of the lists seem pointless: The list of national anthems is mostly repeated in prose, so prosifying the last 2 entries (and adding citations) would remove it entirely; the list of traditional English food seem far too much detail for a broad article on the country as a whole; Why is there a list of names of England in an arbitary number of languages? Why not all languages? Why not a wictionary link, that could then give the name in all languages?YobMod 13:26, 7 June 2009 (UTC)