Talk:Baltimore/GA2

GA Review
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Reviewer: epicAdam(talk) 18:50, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

This article does not yet qualify for Good Article ranking. It is well-written and reasonably complete, but there are large sections of the article that are not adequately sourced. While some information may not be particularly controversial, information citing specific facts, especially dates and numbers, should be cited. A glaring example is the Architecture subsection, which is almost completely without citations. In addition, editorial positions are presented without source, for example: "Oriole Park at Camden Yards is considered by many to be the most beautiful baseball park in Major League Baseball". Likewise, the economy section doesn't provide any data on employment figures. It should be fairly easy to find the number of people employed by industry, the city's GDP, unemployment rate, etc.

I would recommend that the government section be consolidated and made into prose. There is a lot more to be said about Baltimore politics, law enforcement and other city agencies can be included here as well as opposed to their own small headings. Likewise, since education and healthcare are now apparently Balitmore's largest industries, more should be said here. GA articles should also try to minimize lists. The sports section can also be condensed and have added citations.

The lead also need a good deal of work to ensure it adequately summarizes the article. As it currently exists, a casual reader would find out from the lead that Baltimore is a medium-sized city in Maryland that used to be an important port and industrial town but now has a shopping mall near the harbor. Certainly, there is more to Baltimore than that. The largest section in this article are the city's neighborhoods and architecture, which aren't even mentioned, nor is much of the city's extensive history, especially its importance in both the Ward of 1812 and the Civil War.

Other issues:


 * There are a few references that need to be checked, at least one is dead and some of the archived links are invalid, see: Checklinks
 * A few pages need to be disambiguated to point to the intended article, see: Dablinks

While this fails good article nomination right now, I recognize that User:Folklore1 has made significant improvements to the article over the last month. I encourage editors to take these comments to help improve the article further. Best, epicAdam(talk) 18:50, 10 April 2011 (UTC)


 * In support of Folklore1, the depth of content in this article is amazing. EpicAdam should have let this pass GA, because it really is at that level.  I'd recommend doing some of the bot-like consistency and validation checks that adam is asking for, because most GA reviewers are far more benevolent. JamaUtil (talk) 02:10, 15 June 2011 (UTC)