Talk:Buffalo Bills/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Mewe-Mewe. UwU (talk · contribs) 16:01, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

The article doesn't look too bad, I mean I just had to do this since the fish, riggers, and planes had this, so Buffalo, onto you.Mewe-Mewe. UwU (talk) 16:01, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Hello. As the GA nominator, it would be inappropriate for you to also serve as the reviewer, but I don’t mind reviewing this entry. Larry Hockett (Talk) 16:26, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

When we evaluate an article for GA status, we look at several criteria and, based on those, we provide feedback to the nominator (or to anyone else who wants to help work on the article). The process for going through the feedback and getting the article into shape is designed to take about seven days. There can be exceptions to the seven-day guideline, but generally we are looking to see whether the article can be brought up to GA standards within that amount of time.

I think there is a lot of good information here, but there are also some problems that are going to require a significant amount of work to address. When an entry is a long way from meeting one of the GA criteria, it is sometimes best to close the nomination and allow editors to work on the entry at their own pace. The idea is that the entry can be renominated once the bigger issues are sorted out.

While I am closing this nomination, I want to provide some feedback that can be used to prepare for another nomination.

Right now, the main problems I see are with the first and second GA criteria (well-written and verifiable with no original research).


 * Writing: The article is pretty easily understandable, but the writing uses sports jargon and informal language quite a bit. Obviously we are going to use a lot of sports terminology (which wikilinks can help the reader to understand), but jargon is different. Example: The word "drought" is used four times; that's okay language for a sports magazine or an ESPN broadcast, but for an encyclopedia we would use more direct language (the team had not appeared in a playoff game in ________ years). This is one example, but it happens throughout the article. If you would like help with the writing, you can put in a request a WP:GOCE and they will edit your article to help the language flow smoothly.


 * Verifiability: The article has a number of passages that do not appear to be supported by references. Rules about citations on WP can be tricky, but a lot of the uncited material involves contentious statements about living people or statements that are likely to be challenged. As one example from the History section, the article says the team was "pushed to the brink of failure"; this seems like a subjective statement likely to be challenged, but there is no reference cited in that paragraph at all. Other examples: "generally mediocre", "numerous failed attempts" - these statements should be sourced so that they don't just reflect editors' opinions.


 * Increasing the number of citations may help to cut down on factual inaccuracies. For example, as far as I can tell, Jack Kemp was out of football less than a year (1/17/70 to 1/3/71) before getting to Congress, not two years.


 * There is also the issue of whether the cited sources actually support the material in the article. I did a spot check of the references and had some concerns. For example, in the Supporters section, there is a mention of Bills fans being treated differently by outsiders, but the cited source doesn't really support that statement. Another example: When you talk about many fans replacing the Dolphins with the Patriots as a rival to the Bills, there are two sources - one just seems to be a random web survey with only 172 responses and the other one mentions the opinion of someone at ESPN but not really anything about many fans (or any fans). In general, I would focus on trying to provide appropriate references in each passage - and making sure that the article reflects what the existing references say.

Other things that may improve this entry:


 * The section about logos and uniforms is too long and it looks disorganized. See WP:PROSELINE.
 * What is the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Distinguished Service Award?
 * Some passages may not have been updated in a bit. Ex: The legal battle between the Bills and Jills (2017). Preseason games "will continue to air" (2016).
 * Can we work the material from "In popular culture" into the "Notable players" section? Those players are notable, just more notable for non-football activities.

I think there is a lot of work here as far as going through each passage and tightening up the referencing and the language, but again, I think there is a good start toward a future GA nomination. Closing for now. Larry Hockett (Talk) 03:56, 5 February 2021 (UTC)