GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written.
a (prose, spelling, and grammar): A few minor comments:
"Act" in "the Act" is both capitalized and presented without capitalization. I think both ways are probably correct as a case could be made, in each instance, that it is being invoked as either a common or a proper noun. However, for consistently of presentation it might be nice to choose one or the other.
Describing the crowd as a "crowd of witnesses" seems unusual, but this might just be me. Could it be phrased "a crowd numbering 20,000 witnessed" the execution or something?
a (references): Everything is adequately and accurately referenced. There are a few items to which I don't have access for verification, however, in those handful of cases the statements they support are, themselves, largely supporting statements to other portions of the text and contain reasonably mundane and believable content that would not raise any red flags of a type that might require extraordinary verification efforts. That said, the article asserts that this was the first instance of arson being codified, that previously there was not statute law prohibition of arson, it existed only in the common law. However, pages 325-326 of Poulos [1] would dispute this. I think there needs to be some explanation for the inconsistency here.
b (citations to reliable sources): The sentence about QI is sourced to IMDB, which is not RS, but there doesn't seem to be a need to do so as it is also sourced to the British Comedy Guide which - insofar as I can tell - is limited RS for the purposes for which it is used. Other than that, though, everything looks good. c (OR): Looks good. In a few instances, WP:PRIMARY are used, however, this is largely done to establish dates, textual passages, or other functional items that don't require interpretation or analysis. d (copyvio and plagiarism): Earwig returns "violation unlikely" for this article.
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): To be perfectly honest, this is a subject about which I know little, however, I've spent about 30 minutes on JSTOR and Google Books and can't find anything that isn't otherwise covered in the article aside from items of purely trivial matter that would be too nuanced for a general audience accessing a non-specialist encyclopedia article on the subject. I feel, on this basis, the article represents a total treatment of the subject. b (focused): A few minor comments:
I feel the lead is repetitive. By reiterating the fact it was one of the last offences punishable by death in the second paragraph, the first paragraph currently functions as a lead to the second paragraph which, in turn, functions as a lead to the article. I feel these two short paragraphs could be combined into a more succinct lead by deleting the second sentence in the first paragraph and merging the two paragraphs into one.
I feel as though we might benefit from a (very brief; i.e. a sentence or two) introduction to the law of arson, generally, as it then existed.
Fair representation without bias: As, probably to be expected on a subject of this age, the article is completely compliant with NPOV and does not exhibit bias.
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.: Only the nom has edited the article since the start of the year. A review of the Talk page shows minimal discussion and no active disputes.
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): The only image in the article is correctly labeled PD. b (appropriate use with suitable captions): There is only one image in the article, however, given the subject and length of topic, more would be cumbersome. The image is relevant to the article and uses an accurate and reasonably descriptive caption. There is no ALT tag on this image, which might be nice, but is not required for GA.
I'm applying a procedural fail to this as it's been a month without edits as COE is busy in real life. This is a very good article right on the edge of being GA so a fail now will allow COE to renominate it at a more convenient time. Chetsford (talk) 05:16, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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