Talk:Bipolar disorder/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Looie496 (talk · contribs) 18:01, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm happy to have the chance to review such an important article, and I'm willing to put up with an extended GA process if necessary -- my initial impression is that the article is within shooting distance of GA. I'll go over the article bit by bit, but let me start the review with what strikes me immediately. Forgive me for putting this strongly, but the lead really sucks. This article has a huge readership and the lead -- perhaps not the whole article but at least the lead -- needs to be accessible to a general audience. An ordinary person reading the current lead may not even grasp that BD is a condition in which people fluctuate between mania and depression. Much of the current lead needs to be simplified drastically.


 * I've been WP:BOLD and revised the intro to put that into the much simplified new first sentence. Does that help? -- The Anome (talk) 01:49, 16 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, the first sentence is a big improvement, but there is still a long way to go. Think about it this way:  suppose you are talking to a friend who doesn't know much about medicine, and he tells you that his cousin has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and asks you to explain what that means.  You might start with something resembling the first sentence, but you probably wouldn't follow with anything like the second paragraph -- it's too abstract to be useful.  What are "abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood"?  From that description, would you recognize them if you saw them?  This paragraph should try to describe the condition in a way that is concrete enough to be recognizable.  Something like "hyper-energetic, excitable, impulsive, and erratic to a degree that interferes with the ability to lead a normal life" occurs to me -- I'm not suggesting that you use those words, just trying to convey the level of concreteness this should aim for. Looie496 (talk) 02:50, 16 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Note: I have removed some comments added here by which, while interesting, consist of personal opinions without reference to published literature, and therefore are not helpful in bringing this article to GA status. Looie496 (talk) 16:26, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * First of all, massive apologies for not realising that the GA review had started - I've been distracted by all manner of things both on-wiki and off. Following on from Anome's work I've just done some WP:BOLD condensing of the lede - including removing references - I hesitate to do much more without getting community consensus - but is that moving the the right direction? Fayedizard (talk) 05:53, 3 October 2012 (UTC)


 * That's again an improvement, but the real problem as I see it is that the lead is too abstract for our readership. It gives no real sense of what it is like to have bipolar disorder or to meet somebody who has bipolar disorder.  Suppose you had a friend with BD, and you read the lead of our article -- would you recognize that the description there applied to your friend?  I think there is a good chance that you wouldn't. Looie496 (talk) 16:37, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I'm a little lost by the reasoning - would it help if we went though paragraph by paragraph to make sure we get to the bottom of your concerns? at the moment I'm not really clear on which direction to take the content in... Fayedizard (talk) 19:52, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking of something along the following lines: At the lowest level of mania, known as hypomania, individuals may simply appear energetic and excitable.  At a higher level, individuals may behave erratically and impulsively, often making poor decisions due to unrealistic ideas about the future, and may have great difficulty sleeping.  At the highest level, individuals can show psychotic behavior, including violence.  Something that starts to paint a picture in the mind of the reader. Looie496 (talk) 15:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Oooh sounds and looks good - I've adjusted the language slightly to fit, and found a place in the lead - how's it looking to everyone else? Fayedizard (talk) 21:03, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Um, guys? Fayedizard (talk) 16:28, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Resuming
Okay, back on track now, I'll try to get through this expeditiously. Looie496 (talk) 17:33, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * There are lots and lots of wikilinks to redirects. They don't all have to be fixed, but it would be nice to reduce the number. Looie496 (talk) 18:38, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Isn't lithium important enough to be worth mentioning in the lead? Looie496 (talk) 18:38, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm quite happy with the medication stuff as mentioned, but I think it's a good point and I'm interested to hear what other editors have to say - there is a notion that by giving too much promence to the medication stuff we really do change how readers percive the disorder (and arguably that's even a good thing) - so I think it's something to have a proper chat about. Fayedizard (talk) 19:51, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Last paragraph of lead: "German psychiatrist Karl Leonhard split the classification in 1957, employing the terms unipolar disorder (major depressive disorder) and bipolar disorder."   Did Leonhard really use the term "major depressive disorder"?  If not, this should be reworded. Looie496 (talk) 18:38, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Good call - I've made a minor change to clarify (and I think it reads a bit better now as well). Fayedizard (talk) 19:51, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Signs and symptoms

 * I felt the need to do a substantial copy-edit of this section. Mostly I just moved material around and reworded things without major changes in meaning, but I also removed a good bit of material from the Hypomania subsection, which was wordy, poorly sourced, essayish, self-contradictory, and generally crap.  I also removed the two pictures, neither of which shows bipolar disorder (one shows grief, the other a painting by van Gogh, who was not bipolar as far as I know).  Please feel free to fix anything I may have broken.  Also I'm starting to feel that I'm doing a little more than a GA reviewer ought to -- please comment if you have an opinion on this. Looie496 (talk) 18:38, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow - lovely work on the copy-edit - the article is massively better for it. I don't see anything broken, and am suitably impressed with the dedication.  For what it's worth - I certainly thing that the amount of work done there is well over and above the call of duty for a reviewer - personally I would have made a comment and the pictures and asked for the rewrite, but you've made it vastly easier for us. We're certainly happy to to have a reviewer willing to get their hands dirty. :) Fayedizard (talk) 19:54, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Will this GA review be concluded soon? Been over two months and it's the oldest one under review by a lot. Wizardman  16:54, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm a little worried about the fact that ParkSehJik has raised (possibly correctly) a bunch of issues on the talk page - I'd like to think this wouldn't affect the stability part of the article (getting to nomination was a long time more than two months - the project is about 10 months old) but I'd appreiate your take on it wizardman? Fayedizard (talk) 19:13, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The concerns do seem noteworthy, and given how major the article is and how many changes it goes through, having it go through GA at all is probably not the best bet with the way it's run. Getting it towards FA with a peer review or two may be better. Wizardman  03:34, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * We're now at 90 days. Aside from the neutrality template, which seems to have no support on the talk pages (including at NPOV) aside from ParkSehJik who put it there, the article currently has three "citation needed" tags, one "clarification needed" tag, two bare refs, and a "full citation" tag for a ref that has authors but no article. If the tags aren't going to be taken care of, then the neutrality seems irrelevant: the article isn't going to cross the line. (And that doesn't address the idea of a new "controversies" section, proposed by Casliber.) The article's stability doesn't seem much affected by ParkSehJik's appearance; the most recent edits here were November 30. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comments - I'll make the relevent changes over the next few days.Fayedizard (talk) 14:44, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Now that ParkSehJik is no longer posting, I'm less hesitant to comment. This is nowhere close to GA-- there are numerous MOS issues (as one example, almost a dozen instances of "current", see WP:MOSDATE), swaths of uncited text (which really should be tagged as cn), but most importantly, the article is incorrectly cited. There are numerous uses of primary sources to cite statements inappropriately (example: Alprazolam can trigger a manic episode.[80]), and there is not a single recent secondary review used to cite most of the article, while PubMed coughs up numerous 2012 reviews, and even scores of 2012 reviews where free full-text is available. We shouldn't cobble together medical articles from primary sources and a few old reviews when newer reviews are easily available. Even if the other deficiencies are corrected, this article needs to be rebuilt. I understand the delay because of the disruption ParkSehJik visited upon many medical articles, but this should have been closed long ago-- can't get there from here. Here's one example-- there are scores: Sandy Georgia (Talk) 01:41, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The "Psychosocial" section in Treatment is now cited to a 2005 and a 2007 source. Yet there is a 2012 literature review, free full text available, found easily on PUBMED: