Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Ireland/1

Ireland

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

Result: Delist per consensus. When finished, please renominate at WP:GAN. Thanks, PeterSymonds (talk) 14:20, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

This article was summarily delisted by a single reviewer. No opportunity was given for improvements to be made, only 5 problems were listed. This was completely outside of the delisting process for Good Articles. If genuine concerns are present with the articles content they should be presented clearly in the normal fashion, wikipedians should be given time to address those concerns (as is normal).--ZincBelief (talk) 13:43, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

The "delist" issues given are/were:

• There are at least five outstanding requests for citation, some dating back to April 2008.
  • Redress comment: This could easily be addressed by sourcing cites or removing/tempering uncited items. There are 4 that I can see. None of which seem either controversial or critical.Guliolopez (talk) 14:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Update: This has since been addressed. Guliolopez (talk) 17:29, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

• Large sections of the article are completely uncited: Geology, Science, Air, Rail, and almost all of Economy, for instance.
  • Redress comment: This would seem to be a fair point. Though may be readily addressed with recourse to the refs provided in the relevant "sub-articles". Guliolopez (talk) 14:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Update: Air and rail are largely addressed. The remaining text is so generalist (given its summary nature) that specific references would be difficult to apply. The Economy and Geology sections probably still need review. Guliolopez (talk) 17:29, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Bit confused by this, Geology has citations? None of it's beyond what's the school textbooks.--ZincBelief (talk) 15:11, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

• Places of interest section is a list and gallery of images should be moved to Commons and a link provided.
  • Redress comment: These issues (list/gallery) has already been raised on the talk page and is under review. Guliolopez (talk) 14:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Update: Places of interest has been replaced by a short referenced list in prose. The gallery has been removed and the existing link the the Commons should now suffice. ww2censor (talk) 14:54, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

• The formatting of the sources given in References is inconsistent.
  • Redress comment: This would seem like a minor issue that can be addressed without recourse to a GA review activity. Guliolopez (talk) 14:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

• There are two dead links.
  • Redress comment: I cannot find these, so this may already be addressed. Guliolopez (talk) 14:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Update: This is confirmed to be a dead issue. Guliolopez (talk) 17:29, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

• There is an inline external link in the first paragraph of Sport. External links should only appear in the External links section.
  • Redress comment: I cannot find this, so this may already be addressed. Guliolopez (talk) 14:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Update: This is confirmed to be a dead issue. Guliolopez (talk) 17:29, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

The places of interest section and the image gallery appear to be the only two valid concerns. The first is a brief prose issue, somebody needs to sit down and work up some common theme (such as being in the tourist attraction menu) for these places. Given the number of them I'm frankly not too objectionable to a list, but perhaps that is also an argument for clipping. The second is just eyeball rolling.--ZincBelief (talk) 15:08, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Comments: I worked on the dead links yesterday and I could not find the inline external link mentioned in the sports section. So let's work on the outstanding issues. ww2censor (talk) 15:27, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Delist - The main issue with this article is that it is significantly under-referenced. To Guliolopez, addressing his "redress" comments above, rather than arguing about how many tags there are, fix them. No reviewer (including myself, and obviously Malleus) is going to spend hours working on finding citations in an article that they really don't care about personally. I agree with Malleus's delisting of the article, and think that it will quite probably take more than the usual length of a hold to address the issues with the article. My suggestion would be to allow the article to be delisted, spend a few weeks going through the article piece-by-piece, making sure everything is up to par, and then renominate the article at GAN. To be honest, I'm not sure why you think GAR is "easier" than GAN (as you mentioned in the talk page discussion), because at GAR you are giving multiple editors the right to pick at the article, rather than only one as you would in GAN. Now, on to some other issues I see in the article:

• The Places of Interest list/image gallery, as mentioned before.
• The refs are in a sorry state. Web references need to have at the very least a publisher and an access date, which many of them don't. You should either always use cite templates or never use them, rather than going back and forth like the article does currently. The books in the References section should either have some connection to in-line cites to specific pages, or be removed if they're not actually used to reference the article.
• Why are all of the Further reading books on the wildlife of Ireland? This seems like undue weight to me. If these books are used as references, turn them into references, if they're not, just put one here and add some books on other things to do with Ireland, or just remove the section entirely.
• It looks like the broken external links have been taken care of.

That's my comments for the moment. This article needs significant work, mainly on referencing and ref formatting, before it can be considered to be of GA status, and so I believe it should be delisted. Dana boomer (talk) 15:49, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Do you really believe copy editing the references to be significant work? It strikes me as a trivial if tedious process. --ZincBelief (talk) 15:57, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dana. A couple of quick things. Firstly, in your "response to Guliolopez" above, I'm not sure I entirely follow you comment, but I was specifically addressing the point that you note. That is, the delisting editor was the one "arguing about the number of tags". Not I. (The rationale suggested that "five CN templates" was over some threshold. When clearly if we delisted every article that had a CN note, there'd be scarce few left). I was therefore simply pointing out that there were only a handful, and could be easily addressed without the recourse taken. Anyway, to your request that "stop arguing and fix them", you will note that I immediately started looking at the missing references issue. And wasn't just "arguing" as suggested.

Secondly, you go on to use the term "you" in several places in your note ("you should always use cite templates", "you mentioned in the talk page", etc. These comments seem to be referring to one editor in particular. And I can't figure out who. I can only assume it's a "collective you" (like "one should") because I'm sure you (Dana) realise that the reason there are - for example - multiple REF formats is that dozens (if not hundreds) of editors have added those refs over time. And have added them in the format which was either common at the time, or which they were most familiar with. Anyway, per ZincBelief, this would seem to be a trivial (if time consuming) copyediting/formatting issue. And possibly worthy of a talkpage note or template than a summary delisting.

Thirdly, (and again with respect to the "you must do this", and "you should do that" comments) all I was doing was making note of the delist rationale given. I had not directly advocated a "keep" and was simply listing the issues that had previously been noted by another so that we (collectively) could figure out how to address. I am neither GA (re)nominator nor taking individual responsibility for the points listed. I just followed the link on the talk page and thought it useful to list the issues raised and point out that some are already mute, and others could easily be addressed. (And are being addressed) That's all. Guliolopez (talk) 16:47, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh. And as an FYI. The reason there is undue focus on wildlife books is because about a year ago an editor (who has a disproportionate interest in flora/fauna issues and a history of "dumping" loosely related "fauna facts" into high level articles) had inappropriately dropped a "further reading" section into the middle of the article. At the time, rather than blanket reverting his edits as not "100% fully formed", I just moved them to the end. With the expectation that they would either be weeded out or extended into a more general "further reading" list in due course. That apparently didn't happen. Even with 12 months of subsequent collaborative edits the further reading list didn't expand to include more general books. And that is apparently now a "delist" argument?

Possibly its just me, but that seems a little strong. It also seems to encourage editors to blanket reject anything that isn't 100% "fully formed". (IE: Unless an editors contributions are "100% perfect" before they go in, they should be rejected. Because relying on natural collaborative forces to redress might not work, and will result in a delist). The one thing I'm sure of is that I probably should stay away from GA reviews - because (personally) I struggle with the idea of applying critique that seeks to impose perfect rules to an imperfect/organic process. Guliolopez (talk) 17:18, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

None of the things that I mention above (with the exception of the lack of referencing) is grounds for delisting in and of itself. However, when taken together, they point to an article that is in desperate need of some serious work before it can continue to be listed as a GA.

Gulio - I was simply pointing out that if one editor says it's five citation tags and another comes back and says, no, it's four, then this seems to be arguing semantics, rather than the point. Yes, I realize that many current GA's have fact tags in them. I am not saying that the presence of a few fact that is grounds, again, in and of itself, for delisting. It is the fact tags, combined with the large unreferenced sections, the missing pieces of many references and the poor formatting that are grounds for delisting. In WP:Citing sources you can read for yourself that referencing styles should be consistent throughout an article; the guideline doesn't say which style should be used, it simply says that the same one should be used. Also, having publishers and access dates are not part of my formatting comments - they are pieces of information that must be included for a ref to be complete. Without it, it would be like having a book with just the title.

Everyone else - I would really like to see some work being completed on the article, rather than the extended talk posts roasting Malleus and everyone who agrees with him. In its current state, the article is more than worthy of being delisted...so I have a suggestion - instead of complaining about how the article was delisted, since that is already a done deal, how about everyone who thinks the article shouldn't have been delisted put in a solid few hours of work on the article and see if you can get it up to par. I honestly don't care one way or the other - Ireland (although I'd like to go there one day) is not an article of particular interest to me - so I'm not going to spend hours ensuring that it's kept as a GA. But several of you seem to care about the article being delisted (and good for you, there are articles that I care about, and I would hate to see them delisted), so why not work on the article instead of spending time trying to persuade us that you think Malleus is a dick.

And I know that I'm using "you" again. Call it a personal peculiarity - I'm promise I'm using it instead of "one". Dana boomer (talk) 17:46, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

OK - Thanks for the response Dana. A few quick things again however.:

• RE: "Please focus on fixing the issues rather than talking about them". If you look at the recent history you will see that I am. And I'm not arguing it's delisting at all. As stated above I wasn't advocating either position in this review - but just listing the items so that we could address them in a structured way.
• RE: "Number of citations needed". I think you've read way too much into my original comment. I wasn't attempting to debunk the original argument through some debating logic that "if one part is untrue then all is untrue". Now was the point of my comment to correct the point that there were "4 and not 5". I was just pointing out that there were items that needed redress. You focused on the amount of them. Not me. (FYI. In the interest of keeping a "good article" - in the non-legal sense - it's actually very likely that I added the CN tags in the first place.)
• RE: "Why not work on the article instead of convincing us {personX} is a dick". Your reference to {personX} above is the first time I've ever actually noted the name. I've never crossed paths with that editor, so I have no idea how I could be perceived as attacking them or their position. In any way. So I'm totally at a loss with that comment. (Perhaps again however it's a case of "you" appearing to be directed at me, but instead being shouted at the wind).

Anyway, as noted before, perhaps I should "unwatch" this page because (given your comments) these type of review discussion have clearly begotten pettiness in the past. And I'm not the slightest bit interested in such behaviour. As much as you seem to think otherwise, I *am* actually interested in keeping the Ireland article as good as it can be, and apparently shouldn't have wandered into this discussion under that remit. Clearly this type of review operates on some kind of a bi-partisan "opposers" versus "nay-sayers" model. Rather than a collaborative approach. And there is also evidently some history of inter-personal pettiness, and a presumed "partisan" politic that goes with GA reviews that I'm clearly not familiar with. Anyway, I'm off back to that side of the project that works on articles. Guliolopez (talk) 18:12, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Gulio - I'm sorry if you thought most of the above was being aimed at you. I'd forgotten that I'd added your name to address a certain point of the reply at you. Really, only the sentence or two that followed your name was meant for you. The part about Malleus was meant for other editors who may or may not be reading this. I apologize again, and I've edited my post to (hopefully) make that more clear. Dana boomer (talk) 18:19, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

• Endorse delisting. The Places of interest section is an embedded list and should be converted to prose. There are also issues with lack of citations; I've flagged a few in one of the sections. For example, the statement In 2005, Ireland was ranked the best place to live in the world, according to a "quality of life" assessment by Economist magazine should have had a proper citation. (I have since added one, but there are plenty more statements which need proper referencing.)

I have all confidence that the article can be brought up to GA standards; however, the question at hand is whether the article was GA quality at the time of the delisting. Unfortunately, it wasn't. Best to close this community GAR and focus our efforts on improving the article. When it's ready to go it can be re-nominated at GAN. Cheers, Majoreditor (talk) 01:29, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I have done two rather brutal edits to bring us toward GA status here. Firstly I removed the Image Gallery. Secondly, I converted the List of places of interest into a short paragraph, focusing on World Heritgae Sights. AONB and the like could be added later. Personally I object to closing the GAR without giving time to resolve issues with the article. I think this is impolite.--ZincBelief (talk) 11:07, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that attitude to me is indicative of the real abuse of process here; using GAR to short circuit GAN. What is this supposed to be a review of? Surely of the review and delisting, not of the article. Is this to be a future trend? Complain loudly enough about a review and get your article fixed for free in what is effectively a new fast-track GAN process? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 14:19, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

If you can't be bothered to review properly, then don't review at all. --ZincBelief (talk) 14:31, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I note your edit summary of "hypocrite". Shame that you find it imposible to conduct yourself like a rational, mature adult. Anyway, I wish you luck with your new fast-track GAN. Great idea, I can see a lot more people using this system now. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 14:43, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your endorsement.--ZincBelief (talk) 14:47, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

This is not a new trend. In the c. 18 months that I have been working at GAR, it has not been about reviewing the review or reviewing the delisting, but assessing the current state of the article against the criteria. However, where Malleus is correct is that GAR is not a fast-track GAN. Nor is it a sick-bed, where articles are nursed back to health. If reviewers find that the article does not meet the criteria, then the article will have to be renominated at GAN. Geometry guy 19:32, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

• Endorse delisting. In the current state the article fails WP:GACR by a wide margin. It is significantly undereferenced including such potentially controversial sections as North Ireland and History. The reflist does not have a consistent format, many references lack publisher, date, author information. The lead is also not particularly good. It should be both longer and provide more complete summary of the article including history, literature and arts. Current lead is too focused on the origin of the name and population. I actually believe the desisting was correct. Ruslik (talk) 19:19, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
• Pro delist. This is the place to see if articles still deserve to be called GA, not a point by point explanation of what is wrong so that it can be fixed up in time to not delist. The article was already delisted (deservedly, per citation issues), so should go back to GAN, the same as all the others.Yobmod (talk) 16:17, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

The article wasn't delisted per GAR guidelines, so it was given no opportunity to address the issues.--ZincBelief (talk) 16:19, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe that in here, almost everyone agreed that Malleus' delist is correct and acting within GA reviewing guidelines. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:26, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

That is a misleading comment Ohana, as you are well aware. Malleus did not act within the GA reviewing guidelines, you are very well aware of the RFC I opened related to his ignoring of point 4 in those very guidelines. Why lie claim that the actions lie within the GA reviewing guidelines when they do not infact lie within the GA reviewing guidelines here? Perhaps you think your sweep team's guidelines are more important?--ZincBelief (talk) 21:50, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I do agree that it is better for the community to inform contributors and give them time to improve the artcle in individual assessments. But we cannot turn back time, and the people asking for the review have still not improved the article sufficiently, even with more time than the reassessment advises. For such a broad and important topic (a whole country!), the GA requirments need to be strictly adhered to, so this article should be delisted, no matter the method by which it was initally delisted.Yobmod (talk) 08:54, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Fine, I was simply pointing out that it was incorrect to suggest that the article was delisted within GA reviewing guidelines.--ZincBelief (talk) 09:06, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

• Also endorse delisting. History, Culture, Energy Network, and Economy sections (just to name a few) are under-referenced. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:24, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
• Endorse delist. I've been through the article now, and 10 days after delisting, it still has many issues. The most significant is something not mentioned so far (shockingly): the quality of the sources is miserable. The items in the references section (of which all but two are on flora and fauna) are all uncited in the article. Instead the article relies almost entirely on web sources, ranging from government sources to online newspapers to news sources of variable reliability to University web pages to websites such as http://www.cie.ie, http://www.hibernianwindpower.ie, http://www.thrifty.ie, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk, http://www.roman-britain.org, http://www.unrv.com. There are but a handful of citations to books or journals.

The article contains many statements that need citation to reliable sources. Many are uncited. Others use unreliable sources. At present, the article does not meet WP:V, let alone WP:GA?. Further issues include a lead which does not summarize the article, tortured prose and words to avoid in the (disproportionately long) section on "All island institutions", a listy section on "Cities", and overly long sections on economics and sports.

Once these issues are fixed, the article can, of course, be renominated at WP:GAN. Geometry guy 18:21, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I started work on the references/citations a couple of days ago and they do need improvement, but this can be done and hopefully in a week or two (with the help of God and a couple of policemen...)Hohenloh 18:49, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

You are doing very good work! Given the consensus forming here, I hope we'll be able to close this GAR sooner rather than later so that you can get the article onto the nominations list as soon as possible. Community GAR is not like FAC: it can't re-review post improvements very easily (voice of experience). However, I hope that one of the reviewers commenting here will be able to provide a high quality GAN review once the article has been fixed. Geometry guy 19:16, 23 October 2008 (UTC)