Talk:The Truth According to Wikipedia/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: DustFormsWords (talk) 02:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I intend to conduct a Good Article Review of this article. I will insert the GA criteria as a framework, and then commence an initial review. Normally for all but the best or worst articles I identify specific areas requiring improvement to meet the criteria. When the initial review is complete I will notify you on your talk page and await any edits or improvements required. It might take me as little as a couple of hours or as long as a couple of days to complete the initial review. Please be patient! - DustFormsWords (talk) 02:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much for doing the review! ;) Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 02:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

1. Well-written:

(a) the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct;

• Some of my comments below are quite technical. I would not expect all of them would absolutely have to be resolved for GA, but some of them will need to be in order to raise the overall readability to GA standards.

• "Director IJsbrand van Veelen tries to find resolution to questions" - There is nothing grammatically wrong with this, but the phrasing "resolution to questions" creates dissonance when "resolution" (singular) fails to agree with "questions" (plural). For the sake of an easier reading experience could you try a reword? "Direct IJsbrand van Veelen examines questions", for example, is both more readable and more concise.
• "negatively impact previously incarnations of information compilations" - Unnecessarily (and humorously) verbose. Try "harm traditional encyclopaedias" or a similar rewording of your choice.
• "reliability of Wikipedia, and addresses the idea" - The serial comma before "and" suggests that the following clause is another entry in the list of "questions about Wikipedia" that began with "whether it will negatively..." and "reliability", but in fact this is another entry in a list of things the director is doing that began with "tries to find resolutions". You can disambiguate by either changing the comma to a semicolon, or, better yet, breaking this epicly long sentence into two smaller, more readable sentences.
• "Andrew Keen; author of How Wikipedia Works and Wikipedia editor, Phoebe Ayers; Swahili Wikipedia contributor Ndesanjo Macha..." - Okay, by this point in the list of people I'm thoroughly confused. Is the Wikipedia editor Andrew Keen or Phoebe Ayers? Is the Swahili contributor Phoebe or Ndesanjo? What does Phoebe do? You may need to look at restructuring this list to make it clearer. I wouldn't normally recommend brackets but bracketing their credentials might be one way to make this less ambiguous. (You seem to be using semicolons as list separators but then you abandon this when you get to Robert McHenry, and at that point also change from credentials-then-name to name-then-credentials.)
• "how this is impacted by activity from both informal users adding information as well as experts..." - There's no GA criterion requiring you not to use passive voice, but here it's making the sentence unnecessarily complex. Maybe try "Discussion topics include how the contributions of both unqualified and expert users affect Wikipedia, and more broadly the Web 2.0 phenomenon."
• "gathered resource information" - Should this be "research information"? In which case you can change it to just "research". Otherwise, what is "resource information"?
• "The film was premiered" - This can just be "The film premiered".

(b) it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation;

• This article complies with the manuals of style for lead sections, layout and words to watch.
• The manuals of style for lists and fiction do not apply to this article.

2. Verifiable with no original research:

(a) it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;

All sources appear in a section entitled "References".

(b) reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose);

As far as I am able to tell all content is attributed to reliable sources through inline citations.

(c) it contains no original research.

There is no evidence of original research in this article.

3. Broad in its coverage:

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic;

I would normally expect in an article about a documentary film, especially a film advancing an ideological position, to see some discussion of:

• - what motivated the creators to make the documentary,
• - how the making of the film was funded, and
• - whether the release of the film had any real-world results.

It may be that these topics are not discussed by reilable sources, in which case there's nothing more to be done, but I felt I should at least raise the possibility prior to giving the tick.

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

The article does not go into inappropriate detail.

4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.

   This article on a potentially controversial topic appears to present the material in a neutral, unbiased and encyclopaedic manner.

5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

   Despite covering a potentially controversial subject, the article has not been subject to rapid changes or unresolved disputes.

6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:

(a) media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content;

Resolved - File:The_Truth_According_to_Wikipedia.png - This image appears to have a VPRO "bug" in the top left corner and a web address in the top right. Is this watermarking present on the official version of the film, or does it come about through having obtained the image as a promotional still from VPRO rather than directly capturing it from the footage? If it's not present on the actual film then the image is incorrectly described and may pose a problem for our policies against advertising/promotion. Could you clarify the position?

(b) media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

Images in the article are relevant, and are suitably captioned.

Overview - My initial review is now complete. Please have a think about the clarity/readability issues raised under 1(a), and the scope issues mentioned under 3(a), and let me know when you are ready for me to revisit the review via a message on my talk page. I am not set in stone over any of these issues, so after careful consideration if you feel I am wrong I am open to discussing that viewpoint. - DustFormsWords (talk) 04:51, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Overview 2 - It appears that the nominator has taken an extended and unexpected Wikibreak and I am unable to contact him to progress the review. Therefore I am regretfully closing the review as Fail, but if the article is renominated in future I would be happy to take up the reviewing and, in effect, continue this review. - DustFormsWords (talk) 02:14, 2 March 2011 (UTC)