Talk:2011 Scottish Conservatives leadership election/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Dana boomer (talk · contribs) 16:06, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I'll be reviewing this article for GA status and should have the full review up soon. Dana boomer (talk) 16:06, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to fail this article's GA nomination. There are significant problems, most notably with referencing, that prevent the article from being promoted to GA status at this time. Here are the most significant problems:


 * Lack of referencing in many areas that give opinions, statistics and quotes. These include (examples!) the second paragraph of the 2011 Scottish Parliament Election section, first paragraph of Reaction to Murdo Fraser's proposal section, first paragraph of Reaction to result section, and the first paragraph of the Post leadership election events section.
 * Many references missing basic information (titles, publishers, access dates for web references)
 * Several dead links, leading to additional unreferenced information
 * Twitter is not a reliable reference (refs #23, 24)
 * I do not understand the need for non-free images of three campaign logos. These are not discussed in the text, seeing them adds nothing to the reader's understanding of the candidates or the election. The slogans can be easily given in the text, if knowing them is integral to the reader's understanding of the candidates.
 * The Timeline of events section should be integrated into the body of the article. Otherwise, it duplicates much of the information already given and is also much more list-like than article like.
 * Undue weight on the profile of the man who took second place. The winner's policies are given two sentences while the second-place man is given three large paragraphs. Later on three more paragraphs are given to reactions to Fraser's proposal, without even discussing the winner's thoughts on the subject. The fact that the guy who came in second has all of these ideas and proposals means nothing when he came in second. Give more air time to the woman who came in first, since it will be her leadership that will guide the party in the near future.
 * Campaign hustings section needs more context. It does nothing to tell the reader that there were debates - there are debates in almost every election in many countries around the world. Give the reader more information on who won the debates, what topics were debated, etc.

I think that these issues will take more time to address than the typical hold period, and that because of the scope of the weighting, organization and referencing issues it may be better to address them outside of the pressures of GAN. I look forward to seeing this article appear again at WP:GAN when the above issues have been addressed. Please let me know if you have any questions, Dana boomer (talk) 16:33, 4 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for taking time to review the article. Reading what you've said, I think some of it will be quite easy to sort (referencing, dead links, timeline), and info on the hustings is readily available on a party website called 'Tory Hoose'. But given the precious-little media coverage that the election got, it will be a challenge to find more on the policies of Ruth Davidson. As well as the fact that she was elected on nothing more than a 'Stop-Murdo' policy platform. I will continue to work on this article, and once again, thank you for reviewing. Mwhite148 (talk) 18:17, 4 December 2011 (UTC)


 * If there are sources that discuss Davidson's "Stop-Murdo" policy platform, this might be good. I didn't really get the impression from the article that this was her main focus, so if that is the case it should be made more clear in the article. My main issue with this was the length/amount of the attention that Murdo currently receives in the article, versus the lack of attention that Davidson receives. Since they were the two main candidates, their section should be approximately the same length (or Davidson's slightly longer) to avoid undue weight on one candidate, especially a candidate that was not successful. In my opinion, at least... The article currently gives a list of what Fraser pledge to do if he were elected - was there a similar list released by Davidson, or did she say anything throughout the campaign about what she planned to do if elected? I know that inter-party elections are often hard to find independent sources for, but as much as possible it is best to stay away party websites, candidate websites, facebook and twitter. Obviously if you're sourcing "Jane Doe said..." to Jane Doe's website, that's fine, but sourcing "Brian Brown says Jane Doe is awesome" to Jane Doe's website is not so good... Dana boomer (talk) 18:34, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Dana--it appears Mwhite is up to the challenge of getting the aticle up to standards. How about a 7 day hold? – Lionel (talk) 22:12, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * At this point I think it would probably be best to work on the article outside the time pressures of GAN, as I said above. Mwhite is obviously allowed to renominate the article at GAN whenever he feels it is ready. During December there is a reviewing drive going on at GAN, so it is likely to get picked up fairly quickly if he renominates within the month. However, sometimes it takes a while to take care of referencing issues. Dana boomer (talk) 23:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC)