Talk:Tom Winsor/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: WPCW (talk · contribs) 23:22, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Hello, My name is Wayne, and I have taken on the task of reviewing your article. Due to the amount of content, it will take me a few days produce an initial report. Please feel free to contact me anytime during the process. Kind Regards, --WPCW (talk) 23:22, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

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Initial Review

The initial review was completed at the time and date recorded on this entry and does not consider any content changed after its completion. The six good article criteria provide the basis for the review,

Well Written

Verifiable with no original research

Broad in coverage

Neutral

Stable

Illustrated

Well-Written

The article content is well-written, concise, well structured, with few spelling and grammar errors. The issues identified can be easily corrected.

The article, with one exception, meets the Wikipedia manual of style, although much thought if the reference list complied with it. The reference list contains one hundred and eighty sources that initially seems daunting and cumbersome. During the review, significant consideration was given to the format of the references and how it complied with the Wikipedia manual of style. The guidance is to consider potentially using a different style to simplify it. After carefully reading the reference list, it was decided the sources cannot be combined. The perspective taken is that a substantial reference list that is easily followed is more important than its appearance.

Concerning this section of the review, the following issues need addressing or discussing.

(1) The lead section states Windsor is an ‘economic regulatory professional’. What is the definition of an ‘economic regulatory professional’, or can the text be clarified?

(2) When time periods are mentioned, how they are expressed lacks consistency, for example, ‘between 2017 to 2018' or ‘from 2017 to 2018.

(3) The first sentence of the Adverse city and industry regulation section, says ‘(the same day the US and UK began the war in Afghanistan)'. In the third paragraph, it mentions Jo Moore's comment about 11th September being a good day to bury bad news. Are these two events connected? If so, the reader is left to make their interpretations about the links. If the two occasions are linked, the article needs to make that point explicitly.

(4) In the section End of Term, the abbreviation ‘ORR' is used and needs adding to the previous mention of Office of Rail Regulation.

(5) Section Review of Police Officers’ and Staff Pay and Conditions, Part 2, includes a lengthy quotation. Please consider how this complies with the quotation guidelines in the Manual of Style

(6) The Reaction section mentions a police march, involving 32,000 officers in London on the 10th May 2012. The HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary section mentions a protest March in London involving 30,000 officers. Is this the same march? If so, the article has two different counts of protesters, and text will read better if a way can be found of bringing the facts about the march into one paragraph. Please consider if this can be clarified.

(7) In the section ‘Uniform’ chief inspector of constabulary needs capitalising.

(8) In the section, comments on communities ‘born under other skies’ the sentence ‘He argued such areas were not ‘no go zones’ as such for police’. The sentence would benefit from being rephrased removing a ‘such’.

Verifiable with no original research

The article uses standard citations within the text leading to a reference list of one hundred and eighty sources. Many of the topics within the article are recent events, and it is likely that other types of peer-reviewed articles or secondary sources are available at this time.

The predominant type of source used in the article is newspaper reports and government documents. The issue with newspapers is that they are factual but tend to include opinion that may not be politically neutral. Noted is that the editors used a range of newspapers presenting the news from different perspectives.

A critical issue was that in instances the sources did not verify the facts of statements, a matter addressed in the Neutral section of this review.

Broad in coverage

The article is broad in coverage. Although a good article does not need to meet the encyclopaedic standard one topic that does need briefly enlarging at this time is in the HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary section. The article says,

‘On 19 December 2013, the Home Office announced its intention to increase HMIC's annual budget by £9.4 million to enable the Inspectorate to carry out annual, in-depth force inspections on core policing matters in every one of the 43 Home Office police forces in England and Wales, in addition to HMIC's programme of thematic inspections (28 such inspections are being carried out in the current inspection year).[146][147] The design of the new inspection programme is being carried out in close consultation and co-operation with the police service and will lead to an interim all-force assessment in November 2014, with the first full all-force inspection assessment in November 2015.[148]’

A key point about Windsor is the changes introduced about inspecting police forces. My interpretation is the section is discussing the beginning of PEEL assessments (see https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/peel-assessments/how-we-inspect/). If my interpretation is correct, this section is an essential part of the article, but the information is about four years out-of-date and needs updating.

Neutral

The neutrality of the article needed significant consideration. Windsor and his work, as the article implies, is in some instances controversial. An example is a comment on the talk page,

This page is an appalling hagiography, containing many assertions that are totally unsupported by any references whatsoever. It reads like it was cut'n'pasted from a Home Office press release. Shame on you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.67.100.211 (talk) 12:03, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

The review deliberated how the article complied with the Wikipedia biography policy, particularly the requirement for a neutral point of view, and the list of watchwords. It was essential to balance the need to pre-dominantly relying on newspapers as sources but the problems they pose about neutrality, the relevant Wikipedia policies, and the impartiality in editors’ writing style. The review was completed by locating any reasonably contestable statements and how the cited source verified it, and the reviewer was unsatisfied some facts and statements were defensible. Below are some examples,

The article states,

‘Prescott had been fiercely opposed to the privatisation in 1996 and was one of the 'old Labour' stalwarts who wanted to renationalise the industry outright.[14]’

The source said Prescott made a speech but the main topic was the objections by the RMT, and quotes by Jimmy Knapp, the leader of the RMT.

The article states,

‘Winsor's relationship with Railtrack was stormy. He saw it as his duty to hold the company more closely and vigorously to account. He criticised its many failures, including its poor knowledge of the condition, capacity and capability of its assets, rising numbers of broken rails and deteriorating track quality measures, its bad relationship with its train operator customers, its performance shortcomings, poor contracting and procurement strategies and the soaring costs of its projects (especially the renewal and upgrade of the West Coast main line) [41]

The source is a timeline of facts and events, does not provide any discussion or opinion of the facts. The article appears to include the editors’ interpretation of the facts.

Railtrack's poor asset knowledge hampered the work. The fact that the company's information—and that of the Office of the Rail Regulator in the past—was so unsatisfactory frustrated Winsor. [63]

Windsor, nor Juliette Jowit, the author of the newspaper article neither said Windsor was unsatisfactory frustrated.

A thorough examination of the article that the facts and statements were not always verifiable from the sources. At times the editors’ were making interpretations of the source's contents rather than stating what it said. Another concern was the use of many words in the words to watch list.

The editors’ needs to further consider how the article complies with the Wikipedia policies on neutral point of view and verifiability.

Stable

A review of the talk page and article's history shows no evidence of significant debate about the content or evidence of the article of any editing wars. The article is stable.

Illustrated

The article contains photographs that are suitably captioned. A check of their sources and licences revealed no obvious copyright problems.

Summary

It is unfortunate that at this time it does not meet the good article criteria for the reasons mentioned in this review. Consideration was given to putting the review on hold, but due to the amount of work required this option is not feasible. It is evident that the editors’ are knowledgeable about the topic, and made significant efforts to produce an article on a difficult topic. Encouragement should be given to resubmitting the article for review when the identified issues are satisfactorily addressed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WPCW (talk • contribs) 14:29, 1 June 2018 (UTC)