Talk:European Central Bank/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Abhilasha369 (talk · contribs) 02:54, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

This article would certainly pass as a good article. The only issue is the so called charge of "recentism" in the "crisis of 2011" section. Done Maybe in the introduction section, a sentence can be mentioned about the price stability duty of the ECB. Though this is a subset of "administering monetary policy", it would be nice to categorically mention it. Apart from these two things, everything seems good.  Done Abhilasha369 (talk) 02:54, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Detailed review

1. Well Written: There are typos and grammatical errors in the article. Example: "Eligible banks, of which there are about 1500 may bid for short term repo contracts of two weeks' to three months' duration." Basically, s' is used to show plural possession. Here there is no possession.  Done. Another example: "On 9 May 2010, the 27 member states[17] of the European Union agreed to incorporate the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) a special purpose vehicle (SPV) off balance sheet of European Central Bank (ECB) placing bonds to raise money to financing the Deficit spending that European Governments used to replace a share of banking system losses. " - I don't know what the meaning of this is.. Please paraphrase to make the point clear. Done More examples - "This fact give serious problems to liquidity of Interbank lending market involving trust that banks have each other and forcing ECB to use unconventional measures about Monetary policy." Done  Done!
2. MOS: Formatting is needed in certain areas. Example: "This preference has typically led the ECB to argue that the weaker member countries must (a) allocate considerable national income to servicing debts and (b) scale back a wide range of national expenditures (such as education, infrastructure, and welfare transfer payments) in order to make their payments." It would be better if you used bullets for these points. A break from the text is required here.  Done
3. Neutrality is an issue. For example, a statement like "Although "unthinkable," a collapse of the euro (with a reversion to individual national currencies) became, at the end of 2010, a topic of speculation in the financial press." is highly opinionated, unless it's a quote.  Done
4. Verifiable: Citation is inadequate for the size of the article. Every fact/statistic has to be cited. Every opinion/analysis has to be cited. For example, "These tools are also used by the United States Federal Reserve Bank, but the Fed does more direct purchasing of financial assets than its European counterpart." must be cited. There are many many sentences like this.  Done
5. I'm sorry if you felt my first comment was unsatisfactory. I was hoping you would take care and answer the issues I raised. That way I could promote the article to GA status after your edits. But you did not address the issues at hand so I was wondering what happened. Anyway, I would love to give the article GA status but the above concerns need to be addressed first, according to WP:WIAGA, as you rightly mentioned. All the best with the edits.

Regards Abhilasha369 (talk) 15:14, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Review

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   Grammar - see detailed review

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

   Lead section - see review

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Citation is inadequate

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

   Refer to my review.

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

   There are some unsolved issues.

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Abhilasha369 (talk) 15:50, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

My comments regarding your review

1. Please consult a mentor at WP:GAN#M, if possible.
2. Use the 3rd level or 4th level headers (=== ===; ==== ====)
3. If stating an issue, please state where and as in No.5 of the review, when...
4. In number 2 of the review, amount of resources is in point a, and point b is reliable sources...
5. But I agree with inadequate sources...

– Plarem ^{(User talk contribs)} 15:04, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, a mentor is a great idea. I've already spoken to someone about it. Awaiting response. Till then, maybe you can work on improving the article with more citations. Abhilasha369 (talk) 15:32, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

But, how come you put Stability at Neutral? – Plarem ^{(User talk contribs)} 17:03, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I've been asked to take a look at this article. I'll leave some comments later tonight or tomorrow. Protonk (talk) 03:00, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Protonk's comments

• I'll take a look at the original review comments in a moment. For now I want to make some general comments about the article itself to help it along to GA status. Apologies if I repeat some comments from above.
• The lede of this article is too short. Remember that a lede is there to both generate interest in the article and also to provide a relatively complete summary of its contents. For an article of this length you can have a lead of 2-4 paragraphs before really running into length issues.  Done
• The "Power and Objectives" section is better off split between authority and mandates. What channels the bank acts through are interesting independent of the goal of the actions.  Done
• I agree with the tag on Sovereign debt crises. The section is much too long and better off written in summary style. Done
• Independence and future may be better off split by putting the "indpendence" content in a subsection of power and objectives and the "future" content in a subsection of history  Done
• You should (though this isn't a GA requirement) split your explanatory notes and references as described in WP:REFGROUP.
• Images check out.
• The description of US open market operations isn't 100% correct. See Open_market_operations#USA (and not the atrocious Monetary Policy of the USA article). The vast majority of day to day open market operations in the US occur through repo and reverse repo transactions, not outright purchases. There are many salient differences between the Fed and the ECB, but both use repo transactions.

Sourcing/specific comments

• "Tensions were abated by a gentleman's agreement in which Duisenberg would stand down before the end of his mandate, to be replaced by Trichet, an event which occurred in November 2003." Is there a source for this claim?  Done, referenced and the wording a bit tweaked.
• "The primary objective of the ECB is to maintain..." This paragraph is awkwardly worded. The primary objective is price stability, so say that, then transition to the ECB definition for price stability, then compare to the US and (maybe) other large central banks (China, Japan, England?). Then include a little sidebar explaining how price stability and inflation are basically the same thing. You can even reference this working paper.  Done, tweaked the wording, but trying to keep it as simple as possible.
• "It is interesting that all four countries are located geographically on the periphery of the Eurozone." interesting to whom?  Done, removed.
• the fourth and fifth paragraphs in Power and Objectives start to see sourcing thin out and claims become broader and more discursive. I can see two solutions. First, reorganizing and shrinking the sovereign debt crises section will allow you to simply edit out claims in disparate sections regarding the recent crisis. Second, there are a number of great articles (both in newspapers and in journals) looking at how the debt crises directly implicate the mandate and model of the ECB (and there are counterclaims as well). Find those and use them to anchor those sections in reliable source material so readers know they aren't being lead astray.  Done
• I won't make too many comments on the debt crises section as I think a lot of the sourcing and focus problems there would be solved by trimming. the trimming. However despite my suggestion that this section be smaller it does represent a fairly good account of book value problems and the (semi) unique problem of sovereign bonds as collateral in the ECB.  Done the referencing.

Overall and comments on original review

• First off, the comments I made are merely suggestions. The decision to pass or not pass the article rests w/ the original GA reviewer unless they ask for a second opinion. While I feel some of the comments I made above will help the authors get to featured status it is neither a requirement nor a full peer review.
• I haven't looked at the page history for the GA review but merely reading the current revision leads me to believe that this review is within our expectations for how an editor should conduct a GA review. The template with positive/negative/neutral isn't a requirement of the GAN process, but it can sometimes help. I don't use it on my reviews.
• Sometimes GA reviews can be very general. This does not impugn the reviewer as they may not feel comfortable writing a laundry list of small complaints (each which could be fixed be the reviewer) and instead want to ask editors to take a closer look at the article on a few key dimensions.
• As a GA reviewer, remember that your job is to:
  • Be a gatekeeper.
  • Be a resource for help. If you know something (anything) about the topic, suggest sources. If you don't, suggest alternate wording where you see problems. Link to helpful tools or templates where needed.
  • Be honest. Don't worry too much about whether or not you are out of your depth or providing dumb suggestions. If something feels off, do your best to articulate it and help the editors. If you don't see a claim in a cited source, bring that up.
• I don't know how best to review an article with specific pointers. Sometimes reviewers go by citation numbers, but as an article gets edited those numbers change (e.g. if you removed a section wholesale) and that can be confusing. I provide quotes for specific passages or go by section headers (easier if there are more sections). Just try and get a feel for how best to communicate where you are in an article. It helps editors reading your review tremendously.

I hope all this helps. Protonk (talk) 17:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Collated assessment

Clearly, the following aspects need to be improved:

1. Citations
2. Grammar/Paraphrasing
3. Layout (to make the article easier to read in terms of flow)
4. Time sensitive sections need to be clubbed together in an appropriate section

So once the "On Hold" time expires, I will read the article again hoping the above problems have been sorted out. Thank you Protonk, you're an awesome mentor! All the best, Plarem. You've got some edits to make.

Regards - Abhilasha369 (talk) 14:01, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

• One more thing. The "on hold" time is a suggestion more than a bright line. What I do in GA reviews is mention the on-hold time and simply say that if the article is being worked on that time limit is less important. So if I review C++ and no one makes material changes or comments in 7 days I'll fail it. However if I review another article and people are responding or editing enough that I don't forget about the article completely, I'll just check back later. Protonk (talk) 17:47, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

• Also, subheadings in GA reviews need to be lvl 3 or above. The GA review lives on a subpage and is transcluded onto the talk page. If you use lvl 2 headers (two equal sings) you will confuse the parser and the page won't transclude properly. Protonk (talk) 17:52, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Follow up

Hi, I have noticed that you've made a few edits and added some references. However, the references are still inadequate for an article of this importance! For example, the European sovereign debt crisis section is anyway a contentious issue and it has (on an average) one reference per paragraph, whereas every sentence should be referenced. And besides, there are so many news references to this subject, so it's not as if its an obscure topic.

1. All about the Euro Debit Crisis
2. european-problems-get-more-complicated
3. Debt-crisis archive
4. Working paper on Euro Debt

Abhilasha369 (talk) 05:42, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't know that every sentence should be referenced. Every contentious claim or potentially dubious claim should be referenced. I'm happy with the article right now (so long as someone takes out the tags on the crisis section, if they are no longer warranted), but the decision to pass is up to you. Protonk (talk) 22:13, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Questions

Is the comparison to the ECB's conterpart, the U.S. Fed Reserve necessary in this article? Sure, anyone can just go onto the United States Federal Reserve article on Wikipedia. Is this necessary? – Plarem ^{(User talk contribs)} 20:07, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

It would be interesting to have a compare/contrast are, but that can also be created into a seperate page.Meatsgains (talk) 18:46, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Can it be okay top add copyrighted photos to the article? --Mohamed Aden Ighe (talk) 21:02, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

• There are several free photos in the article already. If you think you have a photo which would meet out non-free content criteria for this article you can probably suggest it on the talk page for the article itself (and not the review page), but I doubt it needs one. Protonk (talk) 22:11, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Final assessment

I think this article meets the GA criteria now. It should be passed. Best Abhilasha369 (talk) 09:22, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank-you for reviewing it. – Plarem ^{(User talk contribs)} 10:06, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

You do realise that you need to change the template on the top of the talk page and place {{Good article}} on top of the talk page as described on WP:GAN. – Plarem ^{(User talk contribs)} 10:09, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Nvm, I'll do it myself... – Plarem ^{(User talk contribs)} 11:40, 31 October 2011 (UTC)