Talk:Federer–Nadal rivalry/GA1

GA Review

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I have reviewed this article based on the official GA criteria:

1. Is it reasonably well written?

A. Prose quality:

• A lot of prose in this article is written very well, but a lot of it isn't. For example, the history section of the article should start with "Nadal and Federer", not "they". There are several other examples of this throughout the article.
• Many subsections need a better opening sentence. For 2006, it says "They played six times in 2006." Not only does this hurt the flow of the article, but it doesn't tell us much.
• The following sentences are unnecessary: "This section analyzes the rivalry in several respects", and "The following breakdown of their head-to-head results will be referred to in some subsections."
• The following two sentences are not encyclopedic: "As with all tennis matchups, court surface is an important factor. But before analyzing the rivalry from this perspective, it's important to understand the distribution of court surfaces on the top-level ATP Tour schedule."

B. Manual of Style:

• The style of this article is one of its weaknesses. The biggest issue of all is in the lead: the list simply needs to go. Besides making the lead too long, it looks bad. (Never put lists in a lead).
• Try to avoid giving a sentence more than two references. One reference is usually enough, and two is plenty - I believe you. There are multiple occurrences where sentences have four references appended to them.
• The usage of the cquote template in "Relationship and competitive dynamic" is excessive. It is perfectly fine to quote somebody without using a template, so try to mix it up a bit throughout the paragraph.
• Words like "bageling" definitely need to be avoided
• I am not an opponent of the word "But" starting a sentence, but it's a problem when it's done 50+ times in one article.

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

A. References to sources:

• The references are one of the stronger parts of this article. You can tell that a lot of work went into them.

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:

• Very well-focused on their important matches.

4. Is it neutral?

• After a couple of thorough readings of this article, the POV language sticks out more than any other problem. The words "dominate" or "dominating" are found 11 times in the article. And while some of their matches have most certainly been "grueling" and/or "epic", they need to be presented with NPOV language.
• Here is another example of POV language: "Federer's movement and footwork is exemplary, and Nadal's movement advantage on clay is nullified since the traction and firmness of hard courts makes sliding dangerous." Sounds more like an opinion than a fact - whether or not it is the truth.

5. Is it stable?

• No edit wars, etc

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

• The article has nice images, but it could use a closeup of the two, perhaps with them shaking hands at the end of a match. Most of the shots are from long distance, which isn't terrible, but could be improved upon.

Overall this article has a lot of good content, and the references are very good. If it is cleaned up a bit based on the above suggestions, it will be a great article someday. I am going to put it on hold for now, to let you fix it up. I will make a final assessment on its GA status in a few days. --Sportskido8 (talk) 18:50, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Response to GA Review

Thanks for reviewing this. I have some responses to your comments, which I'll inline below in italics. --Armchair info guy (talk) 03:16, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

1. Is it reasonably well written?

A. Prose quality:

• A lot of prose in this article is written very well, but a lot of it isn't. For example, the history section of the article should start with "Nadal and Federer", not "they". There are several other examples of this throughout the article.

good catch. now fixed. what other examples are you referring to?

I fixed some of the issues yesterday and I'll be making a few more when I get the chance. Just a lot of little things here and there.

• Many subsections need a better opening sentence. For 2006, it says "They played six times in 2006." Not only does this hurt the flow of the article, but it doesn't tell us much.

My rationale was to have a brief intro for each year, emphasizing head-to-head. What do you suggest instead?

I started off 2006 with "In 2006, Nadal and Federer faced each other in six matches." I think it reads a little better than the previous wording.

• The following sentences are unnecessary: "This section analyzes the rivalry in several respects", and "The following breakdown of their head-to-head results will be referred to in some subsections."

Agreed & fixed. The h2h breakdown is popular (people have added some obscure stuff there many times) so I'd like to keep it.

Ok.

• The following two sentences are not encyclopedic: "As with all tennis matchups, court surface is an important factor. But before analyzing the rivalry from this perspective, it's important to understand the distribution of court surfaces on the top-level ATP Tour schedule."

I see your point and removed it. The purpose of the lead-in is to give an overview of the annual tennis schedule to put each surface in context. This is the most common angle from which analysts and fans talk about the h2h results.

Understood. I think it can be said differently which does sound more encyclopedic, if you want to re-word it. Another thing I didn't realize before: The entire paragraph after "Results on each court surface" should probably be a note at the bottom instead of prose in the Analysis section. It contains good information, but it's not something specific to this particular article - it could be in several hundred tennis articles. So I would put it in a note.

After taking that away, you can replace it with the Significant Aspects section, but with prose instead of a list. I think that would look a lot nicer.

Great idea to make it a footnote. Just did so and looks & reads better.

B. Manual of Style:

• The style of this article is one of its weaknesses. The biggest issue of all is in the lead: the list simply needs to go. Besides making the lead too long, it looks bad. (Never put lists in a lead).

I see your point. If this is a deal-breaker, I'll create a new section "Analysis/Significance" or something similar and move them there. The first 3 paragraphs are a solid intro as it is.

This is a deal-breaker. The lead looks a lot better now.

• Try to avoid giving a sentence more than two references. One reference is usually enough, and two is plenty - I believe you. There are multiple occurrences where sentences have four references appended to them.

I intentionally load up the refs on statements like "many analysts said it's the greatest ever". Believe it or not, somebody actually tagged [who?] on this exact same sentence in the Nadal article. Even with 4 refs!

I guess it's ok to have more than 2 references, but I always thought 1 or 2 looked better. You can keep the four if you'd like.

• The usage of the cquote template in "Relationship and competitive dynamic" is excessive. It is perfectly fine to quote somebody without using a template, so try to mix it up a bit throughout the paragraph.

I agree. Simple indent will suffice.

Looks better now.

• Words like "bageling" definitely need to be avoided

what's wrong with a tennis term, especially since it's wikilinked?

According to Wikipedia, "Jargon, that is, words and phrases which are not widely understood outside a specific group, or understood differently by different people, should either be avoided or explained where possible." You and I both know that it is a tennis term, but most people don't. The same thing can easily be said with common language, so I'm not sure it's necessary.

replaced "bagels" with common terms. thanks for the explanation

• I am not an opponent of the word "But" starting a sentence, but it's a problem when it's done 50+ times in one article.

it's only 15 (I searched).

I guess I was exaggerating here (sorry), but even 15 seems like a lot. For example, the sentence "But Nadal is especially suited for this surface" in the Clay section doesn't read well, as it is.

Funny... I actually really like that sentence, even more than any of my other "But"s. The purpose is to underscore just how great Nadal has been on clay, dominating the clear #2 on clay.

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

A. References to sources:

• The references are one of the stronger parts of this article. You can tell that a lot of work went into them.

Thanks!

No problem.

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:

• Very well-focused on their important matches.

4. Is it neutral?

• After a couple of thorough readings of this article, the POV language sticks out more than any other problem. The words "dominate" or "dominating" are found 11 times in the article. And while some of their matches have most certainly been "grueling" and/or "epic", they need to be presented with NPOV language.

Interesting. To be honest, since this is a rivalry article, my POV focus has been entirely on being fair to both players, and I think I did a good job in that respect. As for the specific words you cited - I don't use the word "dominate" lightly. That's a big part of the significance of their rivalry is the unprecidented combined dominance. And what's wrong with "grueling" in relation to marathon 5-setters? The "epic" one is probably a bit over the top and will remove or reword.

I removed some of the POV language yesterday. It's not that you're being fair to one player or the other, as you do write fairly for both of them. It's mostly your opinion of a lot of the matches. If you want to convey that a match is grueling, a quote would be better instead of the actual article saying it. As for "dominating", some instances of it are okay here, but when you say something like "He dominated his opponents en route to his third Australian Open title...", it sounds like an opinion. The word dominate doesn't need to be in that sentence.

cleaned up some more of this - reduced "dominate" and remove "grueling". I think the remaining "dominates" are appropriate.

• Here is another example of POV language: "Federer's movement and footwork is exemplary, and Nadal's movement advantage on clay is nullified since the traction and firmness of hard courts makes sliding dangerous." Sounds more like an opinion than a fact - whether or not it is the truth.

agreed. That paragraph is probably the worst in the whole article. I'll spend some time this weekend on it.

Ok.

5. Is it stable?

• No edit wars, etc

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

• The article has nice images, but it could use a closeup of the two, perhaps with them shaking hands at the end of a match. Most of the shots are from long distance, which isn't terrible, but could be improved upon.

I agree, but those are the best we have in commons.

That's fine. Just a point to keep for the future.

Overall this article has a lot of good content, and the references are very good. If it is cleaned up a bit based on the above suggestions, it will be a great article someday. I am going to put it on hold for now, to let you fix it up. I will make a final assessment on its GA status in a few days.

I'd appreciate if you'd respond to my responses here before giving a final grade. And thanks again for taking the time to review this and other articles.

It's getting better. I'll be making some more changes in the next few days to help you out. --Sportskido8 (talk) 16:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Cool! thanks for the response and making some fixes. I made some more edits tonight and added some more comments above in italics. --Armchair info guy (talk) 04:39, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Question: why did you remove wikilinks to things like "35 match win streak" and won the tourney "without dropping a set"? I like those sorts of links to interesting pages I wouldn't have found otherwise. --Armchair info guy (talk) 16:46, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

It seemed like there were too many of those links. Surely these facts can be found and referenced from the web somewhere, which is always a better source than a different Wiki article anyway. --Sportskido8 (talk) 20:10, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I hate to say it but there are still a lot of prose and organizational fixes that need to be done to this article. I'll give it until Saturday for my final review. --Sportskido8 (talk) 15:16, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I've read over your prose edits several times and don't see much of a difference. To me, it boils down to somewhat different prose styles. As for organization, what's wrong? I think it's logically organized and fair to both players. --Armchair info guy (talk) 14:54, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I've been trying to make the prose more encyclopedic from its current state. The main organization issue is the Significant Aspects section, which should be a paragraph instead of a list. --Sportskido8 (talk) 19:33, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

The thing about Significant Aspects is that they're discrete points well-suited for a bulleted list. Plus it's easier to read each point in list format than if they're just paragraphs.

I was reminded of our prose debate yesterday while reading this piece from Pete Bodo, the most cited tennis analyst in the article. My reason for showing you this is that there are different prose styles, and I don't see why it's an issue. I think both of our writing styles is sufficiently encyclopedic in terms of being clear, concise, and objective. --Armchair info guy (talk) 14:39, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and made more changes. The points in the bulleted list were good, but they looked like trivia, and that is generally discouraged on here. I didn't have to make any major changes today, but I did see some POV left over ("It is remarkable that they have only played 3 matches on grass.") But now that the prose has been edited and the overall organization is better, I think it is worthy of GA-status.

The article still has room for improvement though, so it might take a while before it gets FA consideration. Nice job though on it so far, the content is very good. --Sportskido8 (talk) 15:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Awesome! Thanks for being patient and thorough during the review process. And thanks also for making a bunch of edits to improve the article. --Armchair info guy (talk) 16:09, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

No problem. I don't like seeing articles being failed, so I always try to give them a shot. --Sportskido8 (talk) 21:40, 7 April 2009 (UTC)