Talk:Soil/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: TheSpecialUser (talk · contribs) 00:30, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Since I'm busy with real life, I've been doing reviews which can only be completed at a glance. I'm sorry to say but this article is far away from GA standards. Here are the 3 basic reasons behind it:

The article is well detailed but still I feel that a vast topic like this needs additional 10-20K words or more
The lead is way too big in comparison with the article. Few things which are in the lead are not covered in the later part of the article which is a problem. Anything in the lead should be covered later in the article with more details and lead should be summary of the article per WP:LEAD
There is lack of refs. This is the main reason for the failure. The article is full of unsourced material and thus it is extremely tough to verify the content and to track down any vandalism. We need references to WP:RS in order to verify the content and this article has 70% of its content as unsourced. To get this up to GA level, each and every fact in the article should have at least one reliable source using well formatted citation.

Unfortunately, these issues cannot be addressed in 3-4 months as the topic is too complex and big. Sorry to say but I've to quickly fail it. Once addressed the mammoth issues raised above, anyone can go for another nom. Thanks! TheSpecialUser ^TSU 00:30, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I re-read the lead and find there is still redundancy that makes the reading plod along and seem as if it is too long. Otherwise the lead needs to mention Classification, Uses, Degradation, and Reclamation some of which would need only one line. Soil Uses seems a bit trivial and probably does not need expanding. Degradation and Reclamation are large subjects and probably need their own articles with a brief overview here rather that going into specific examples in this article. One subtopic missing is Terra Preta or soil carbon of an anthropogenic origin and its usefulness w.r.t. buffering of soil in tropical climates where clay and humic components do not exist. I laid out the article following the table of contents of one of the two sources I have on my desk which is of course written in the light of agriculture. I can't see any other major sections that might be added to expand the article without straying too far into the subject of agriculture with the exception perhaps of Soil Testing which again is directed toward "correcting" the soil to improve its agricultural use. I have to go through and provide more references to the parts I wrote. Will do. Zedshort (talk) 16:38, 31 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Update - There have been about 2400 edits since 00:30, 27 October 2012 (UTC), the article has improved quite a bit. -- Paleorthid (talk) 18:59, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]