Talk:Blowing from a gun/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: North8000 (talk · contribs) 15:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I am starting a GA review of this article. North8000 (talk) 15:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for doing this! :-), Arildnordby (talk) 15:16, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * My pleasure! North8000 (talk) 15:23, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Review discussion
I'd like to bring up two things which I do NOT consider to be to the point of being problematic as context for a third item. On person on the talk page expressed the opinion that the article was too long. I don't think that it is too long. It probably has more examples and details than a typical article, but I still consider that to be in the range of OK. Second, some might consider it to be a bit heavy on the macabre details, but I think that it is in the range of OK on that as well. But in the light of those two items, IMHO the "blowing up of people and bodies of people" material unrelated to the topic of the article should be omitted. For example, talking about taking the head of an already decapitated person and putting explosives inside of it and igniting them, or of blowing up buildings (using placed explosives) with people in them. What do you think? I could help pare those if you agree. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:14, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I see your point. However, rather than cutting down on material on related practice, I would like to cut in description of core practice. This in order to preserve comprehensiveness, but to remove unnecessary "gore porn", as some would call it. But, give me some time to think on your suggestion as well. Ok?Arildnordby (talk) 21:35, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure, take your time. I'm pretty structural and direct when I write write like above, So I felt that the length and amount of detail of the material within the topic were in the higher end of the "OK" range, but within it.  Wikipedia is not censored, and so those details are informative.  I really don't see how coverage of arguably "related" practice is a part of comprehensiveness for coverage of this topic.  But, conversely, there's nothing really wrong with including. it. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:06, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * On further reflection, I tend to agree with you on blowing up dead people/body parts. Do you think the Burman section should go as well? It won't be any problem for me. However, I think the rockets method should be kept.Arildnordby (talk) 22:18, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've removed post-mortem blowing up in "Rituals and Perception", plus the whole rather divergent "Burma" section.Arildnordby (talk) 22:26, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Cool! North8000 (talk) 17:13, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding footnoting and citing of quotations, there are a various policies and guidelines that relate to this (including to avoid even accidental borderline plagiarism and copyvio) and so it is a pretty strict area  Some related to wp:verifiability which says that they must have in line citations. The other relate to clearly identifying quotations as quotations and crediting the source so as to avoid accidental borderline plagiarism / copyvio. In reading this through, I think that this need s to be done in a clearer fashion. In many cases I believe that you gave the source of the quote in a footnote on the previous sentence. Between this location and there not being a statement of the source of the quote, I don't think that the quote is clearly attributed to the source. North8000 (talk) 12:46, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, for the direct block quotes, I have placed the source in front of the block quote, rather than at the end. Should I change that?Arildnordby (talk) 13:30, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * For the first sections or so, I have now placed the references at the end of the direct block quotes. Is that how you think it should be?Arildnordby (talk) 14:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that that is the best way to do it (make the source of the very clear), albeit not the only way to do it.  Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll go through with that reference clafication.Arildnordby (talk) 16:06, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * DoneArildnordby (talk) 16:30, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Great. Resolved. North8000 (talk) 01:40, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Some additions
I went through some newspaper bases today, and found some additional 20th century reports, from German Kamerun, Marocco and Afghanistan 1904-1913. Since they filled in some cultural/dynastic gaps, I thought fit to include them.Arildnordby (talk) 17:19, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Cool. North8000 (talk) 17:22, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, unless you have some other comments, perhaps we should let the GA Review gestate for a week or so to allow others' comments, before you make your decision?Arildnordby (talk) 17:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * My next step was a couple of thorough slow reads of it. Waiting a week is fine. North8000 (talk) 17:46, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok! Take the time you think appropriate! :-)Arildnordby (talk) 17:52, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

The subheader "Africa" looks oddly empty, IMO it would look better with a summary sentence or two of the content which follows.

I'm also finding some of the sentences a tad unencyclopedic in tone. I might tweak them myself rather than bother to list them here. Gatoclass (talk) 13:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * On second thoughts I'm seeing many more problems than I have time to deal with; the whole "Rituals and perceptions" section, for example, reads like a random quote farm. I think this article would need quite a bit of work to bring it up to GA standard, and as I'm too busy right now to take this on myself, I am going to have to leave this one in the hands of the original reviewer. Gatoclass (talk) 13:26, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for comments. I'll work on paraphrasing several of them, rather than in extenso quotation.:-)Arildnordby (talk) 14:07, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The article writing does have a feel of having a large amount of examples and detail and less overview / summarization of material. And the section with the quotes shows this more so than others. But, mitigating that issue with respect to a standard for review of the article, this is a mostly historical practice and a specialized topic such as this, the amount of overview type sources could be limited. Next, the quotes do include informative details. Also, this for Good Article, not Featured Article, and so the bar should not be overly high. It is also a very well done and thorough article in the other respects. The end result is that if I had to say "pass" or "non-pass" today, I'd say "pass". But in view of the discussion, I think it agreeable and better to do a few improvements in those areas first. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:29, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, summaries must first and foremost be accurate, and therefore, one should be extremely wary of introducing generalizations/simplifications into summaries that does not have evidential support. I usually begin the longer sections (but also the intro as such), with content specific summaries that are strictly accurate relative to the evidence material presented later. I.e, summaries as results of compilation. Furthermore, one might say that an example from the Gold Coast, one from Colombia and one from the Malayan peninsula constitutes "a load of examples", but if you are to attest the distribution on a global scale, then an example from the Gold Coast can't stand as representative for Colombia. And so on. When it comes to the longest section, pertaining India, some trimming might well be done, but the result ought to not be misleading by misrepresenting the variety of reasons behind the practice, for example by giving the utterly misleading one that this practice was a "military" punishment. Furthermore, having loads of examples, in the absence of independent scholarly research gives a fair representation of the distribution of reports; for example, there are far more reports relative to Portuguese and Spanish usage than French or German (and no Europeans can compare with the Brits!). That is, "a load of examples" is highly informative in itself. But, there is most definitely a valid concern when te whole issue is overdone.Arildnordby (talk) 16:05, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * As for FA Status, I think it is meaningless with FA articles that is not predominantly based on current, up-to-date research by professionals, and that means that this article, for example, can't ever get FA status until monographs on blowing from a gun are published (a highly unlikely event, IMO).Arildnordby (talk) 16:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree on everything that you said. North8000 (talk) 16:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I would be very gratified if you were willing to make this GA Review into a "trimming session"; quotations can be paraohrased, merely linked to, retaining though some to portray the drama, or spectacle of eyewitness reports, that I think is notable enough in an article regarding an..execution spectacle. The practice was designed to incite horror, and to give some space to horrified reports ought to be well within the scope of the article. The question might be one of judicious selection, rather than overdoing the thing.Arildnordby (talk) 16:19, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * With regard to the "Rituals and perceptions" section, I think the problem here is that a bunch of trivial details and examples have been shoehorned into what should really be a simple introductory section. IMO, it should be just called "Ritual", or "Rituals" plural if there were different rituals in different places, and the section should probably just confine itself to a description of those rituals. If you want to include the gory details, I suggest you do that in a dedicated section, called something like "Descriptions of individual executions". This way, you would not be surprising the reader with unexpected, and unexpectedly macabre, digressions, and those who are not interested in the details can simply skip the section altogether. Gatoclass (talk) 11:31, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * A very good suggestion! To split it up in a "Ritual" section, where the typical mode, and variant modes are briefly, yet accurately, described, and an "Eyewitness report" section will definitely improve it.Arildnordby (talk) 14:04, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I have done some heavy editing of the Rituals section, as per suggestionArildnordby (talk) 12:12, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think that looks a lot better, though the section could still use a copyedit. Gatoclass (talk) 12:45, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * What is a copyedit? Editing a copy? Copying an edit??? (I'm not a native English speaker..)Arildnordby (talk) 12:48, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Aah, yes. Edit of form, rather than of content, if I've got it. :-)Arildnordby (talk) 13:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

GA criteria final checklist
Well-written Factually accurate and verifiable Broad in its coverage Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias, giving due weight to each Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute Illustrated, if possible, by images
 * Meets this criteria. By nature of the age and scope of the topic, it is inevitable that the article has proportionately more coverage of examples and a bit less of "overview" than typical, but this is due to the nature of available sourcing.   North8000 (talk) 01:47, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Meets this criteria. Very well sourced. North8000 (talk) 01:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Meets this criteria, within the scop of the article. North8000 (talk) 17:59, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Meets this criteria. North8000 (talk) 18:17, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Meets this criteria. North8000 (talk) 15:24, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Meets this criteria.  Has one image, and it is a free image so no article-specific use rationales are required.  A few more images would be a nice addition, but I understand that such would be hard to do for this topic, and I consider this requirement (as it is written) to be met. North8000 (talk) 15:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * There are some grainy drawings hidden away in some of the more obscure references, but apart from the difficulty of getting them into the article, there is a question whether they would add much in information content.Arildnordby (talk) 15:16, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Result
This article passes as a Wikipedia Good Article. Congratulations! What an immense amount of excellent work and sourcing work. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:48, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for a conscientious review!Arildnordby (talk) 10:05, 10 December 2013 (UTC)