Talk:British Empire/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Hi! I will be reviewing this article for GA status, and should have the full review up soon. Dana boomer (talk) 18:55, 28 October 2008 (UTC)


 * GA review (see here for criteria)


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS):
 * The lead needs to be longer - four solid paragraphs would be about right for an article of this length. Also, leads are supposed to be a summary of the entire article (with no new information), and so do not need references except for direct quotes or really controversial facts.
 * The See also section is really long. I'm sure many of these are linked within the article itself, so please try to shorten this to only the most important links.
 * Please make your World War I and II section headers consistent. I.e., either have them as First World War and Second World War or World War I and World War II.
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (references): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * The biggest problem with the article right at the moment is the lack of referencing. I noticed recent discussions on the talk page about not having the cite "the sky is blue" type facts.  However, there is a difference between what you think is a "blue sky" fact and what other people think it is.  For example, check out the Horse article to see the level of referencing there.  A lot of the information in this article is a "blue sky" fact to anyone seriously involved with horses, but we still have to reference it because people outside of the equine field have no idea whether or not these things are true.
 * There are fact tags that have been in place since March of 2007. These must be taken care of before this article is promoted to GA status.
 * There are some sections that are completely unreferenced. For example, Abolition of slavery, the Cape Colony, the Suez Canal, Home rule in white-settler colonies, etc, etc, etc. In general, the rule of thumb is to have at least one reference per paragraph.  If the same reference covers the same paragraph, then that's great, just put it at the end of the paragraph and everything is good.  However, having successive unreferenced paragraphs and even sections is not good enough for GA.
 * Current ref #2 (Gordon) deadlinks
 * Current ref #6 (MacMillan) deadlinks
 * Web references all must have publishers and access dates. Only the title should be linked.
 * Because you link to some books multiple times, I would suggest using a split reference format for your book references. This makes the notes section easier to read, since you are not repeating non-essential information (publisher, isbn, etc) over and over again.  Also, all book refs need ISBNs where they are available.
 * Either always use cite templates or never use them. It is a personal preference whether to use them or not, but you have to be consistent.
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * 1) It is stable.
 * No edit wars etc.:
 * There seems to be some rather heated discussion going on recently on the talk page about various topics. It doesn't seem to have escalated to the point of edit warring on the article itself, so please keep it that way. Dana boomer (talk) 19:20, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * Pass/Fail:

There are some serious issues with the referencing compliance of this article that need to be overcome before this article can be promoted to GA status. I haven't done a full review of the prose, because I would like to see that there are editors interested in working on the concerns outlined above before I do so. If you have any questions, please drop me a note here on the review page or on my talk page. Dana boomer (talk) 19:20, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi there Dana boomer. Thank you very much for your initial comments and for taking this on.  I will definitely be interested in working on the concerns outlined above, and I hope others will too.  I will try to address your suggestions over the next few days.  The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick t 23:38, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll have a look at redrafting the stuff in (1) if you're going to look at (2). However, I'm not sure the reasoning provided is valid. "The sky is blue" example was picked because everyone on Earth (i.e. our readership) should be aware of this and the statement should not, therefore require validation. Looking at the suggested example, the article on horses does not provide any validation for the number of legs on a horse (the average, of course, is less than four). Perhaps more relevant to this article is the unreferenced assertion that the English-speaking world measures the height of a horse in hands. Do these claims need references? I don't think so, but since I've just challenged them I've created a whole lot of work for someone. Is that what Wikipedia is about? Wiki-Ed (talk) 13:48, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, the assertion that horses are measured in hands is referenced (it's ref #19, which is a little farther down the paragraph), which actually makes my point perfectly. The fact that horses are measured in hands is never questioned in the equine community.  It just is.  If you told in the equine community someone how tall a horse was in inches, they would look at you like you were absolutely insane.  However, many people outside the equine community don't know this, and so they question it. Likewise the fact that "Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882." might be well know to people who study that region/time period, but it's not well known to me and so I have no idea whether this is actually true or if this is just an editor blowing smoke.  Make sense?  Especially if you plan to take this article further to FA, they are going to require that everything be cited.  I'm just asking for most. Dana boomer (talk) 14:17, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you sure that source relates to that specific claim? Obviously I don't have the book in question, but I would be surprised if a source on horses covered the precise pattern of measuring systems applied across the English-speaking world - for starters, what does it mean by "the English-speaking world"? The main article on Hand (length) suggests a much more limited number of locations. The point here is that validating every statement is futile, particularly for historical articles. If that is what "Good" or "Featured articles" require then I'd rather his article was neither, because it will no longer be of any use to anyone studying history. Moreover, this practice discourages synthesising sources and promotes original research, hammering single "validated" sentences together to form a mismatched paragraph that does not reflect any school of thought. In-line citations should be reserved for demonstrably (i.e. academically) controversial statements, as per WP:V. The Wiki links and references at the end should be enough for anything else. Wiki-Ed (talk) 17:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If you are firmly enough against in-line citations that you would rather withdraw this article from GA consideration, then please let me know and I will do so. Any reviewer you get is going to tell you that you need to have far more citations now than you do currently. Please just let me know what your thoughts are.  As for the source in the article, although I don't have the specific book in question, I suspect that, as with most books on the subject, it simply says something along the lines of "horses are measured in hands".  Period.  Which is even less specific then what we currently have in the article. Dana boomer (talk) 18:02, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Dana: I fully agree with you about the sources and will look for them even if noone else will.  The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick t 23:17, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Work started
I have started tackling the more mundane suggestions above (would be nice to get some help on that...), and several the introduction has been lengthened thanks to the contributions of several editors. Though it's not complete, I would be very grateful if we could start to take a look at some of the prose. Thanks. The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick t 20:55, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I am keeping an eye on the article with regards to this GA review. However, I'm not going to begin on a review of the prose yet.  The main reason is that as you are going through the article referencing, you are making significant changes to the article, including removing and adding information, rewording sections, removing or renaming section headers, etc.  I am not complaining about this - it is no doubt good for the article.  However, any prose review that I do now is going to be made moot as you go through and change everything...
 * To be honest, I would like to know your thoughts on closing the nomination for now, with the agreement that I will review the article ASAP when you renominate it. This article still has a long way to go before it reaches GA status, and I know from my own personal work on top-level articles such as this one that the process of moving an article from severely under-referenced to GA class can be long and tiring, even with multiple dedicated editors.  If you are willing, I would like to close this nomination, and then have you take a few weeks or even a couple of months to work the article over completely - making sure that the headers are as you want them, that the correct information (not too much, not too little) is included in the article, that everything is referenced, that prose looks good, etc.  This is not a process that should be rushed through by editors on a deadline...
 * As I said, if the review is closed now, I will agree to re-review as soon as I can when it is put up for re-review. Let me know your thoughts. Dana boomer (talk) 01:08, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * OK - that's fair enough. I presume, as I nominated it and noone else seems to be quite as eager about it as me that others will not mind me agreeing with you to close it for now.  Thanks for all your help and advice on this.  Hopefully we'll be able to renominate in a few weeks.  The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick t 01:28, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Allright, I'll go ahead and close the review. Drop me a note when you renominate it, and I'll review it as soon as I get time. Dana boomer (talk) 19:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)