Talk:Buses in London/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Miyagawa (talk · contribs) 09:46, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Afraid that this is going to be a failure in this instance as I do not believe that the article is nearly reading to meet the Good Article criteria. It actually meets the speedy deletion criteria because of the presence of multiple citeneeded templates.Here are the issues I see currently in the article:
 * What part of the CSD criteria does this meet? Surely if this article was nominated for a CSD, it would be speedily declined. I had a look through the article, and i could only find two cite needed areas. Class455 (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, ignore the speedy deletion mention, I meant speedy fail for GA. Nothing to do with CSD at all. I've just got CSD on the brain at the moment. Miyagawa (talk) 15:10, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * There are numerous uncited paragraphs and sections.
 * A couple of sections which really don't go into the required detail. For example, the Media section only has a couple of brief lines, when there is no description about the London Bus being an internationally recognised symbol of the city alongside other staples such as Big Ben and the Black Cab.
 * History could do with a good expansion - really it should be one of the larger sections there. Stuff that immediately springs to mind is things like London buses were used to transport troops on the Western Front during World War 1. What was the effect on buses versus the tram network, and why were trams phased out in favour of buses? There will be other points for expansion as well. Right now it feels like it's an abbreviated section from a larger article which has been split off.
 * I'd make "New Routemaster and bendy bus withdrawal" a subsection of "Vehicles". Although note, while there is a section saying that bendy buses were withdrawn, you don't mention them being introduced.
 * ✅ (subsection created), However, information on why they were introduced can be found on the article Articulated buses in London, some of it can be copied over, but not as a straight cut and paste move, of course. Class455 (talk) 14:59, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Also, to repeat a question asked at the top of the talk page - why are London buses red? Even if it's not a precise reason, you should include theories on why from reliable sources. It's probably the key question people would want answered in the article.
 * I found this source, however Im not sure whether this is self published or not. I could add this into the article after defining whether this is a reliable enough source. There are other sources available for this. Class455 (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Terrorist incidents shouldn't be a bullet pointed list. As with the others, I'm not sure it covers the relevent topics at present - for example, why was a bus targetted in the 2005 bombings?
 * This could be broken into a general accidents and incidents section (one like on Heathrow Airport), with notable incidents mentioned, unfortunately, accidents on London Buses are quite common, and generally non notable unless it is for example, a terrorist attack. Class455 (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Facts and figures mentions school buses aren't included, when you don't mention them elsewhere. Furthermore, it doesn't really cover all the facts and figures you might expect, and is only four stats. There's numerous things you could include in here.
 * Some additional facts around may fail WP:NOTGUIDE. Class455 (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * All of the citations need to be similarly formatted. At the moment you've got several bare urls, and considering the scope of this article I'm surprised that more book sources aren't included. I've also got concerns about the reliability of citations #1, #5, #15 and #31. It's also heavily reliant on TFL sourcing at the moment, so you should seek to expand the secondary sourcing used in the article.
 * Regarding your reliability concerns, Cite #1 is from the BBC, which is a reliable source. Cite #5 is reproduced history from different books, mainly those published by the PSV Circle, which seems to are written by people there at the time, I do think though, it may fall under a self published source. Cite #15 is from London TravelWatch, a governing body for TfL, which put queries forward  if something is wrong (in this case, the bendy buses) so is reliable. Cite #31, I also agree there is a problem with reliability there, as it is a blog. However, this contains information from Freedom of Information requests from TfL, which are usually answered by email. I have submitted one myself before. Class455 (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

So really, it needs a complete overhaul at the moment. Once these are all addressed, feel free to return it to GA, although if it's your first Good Article attempt then I'd suggest taking it through WP:Peer Review first for other opinions on what needs to be fixed in order to avoid a speedy fail nomination in the future. Miyagawa (talk) 09:46, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your review, Apart from the queries I've listed above, I'll be happy to rectify the concerns. I will also let fellow London Transport WikiProject members know that the article needs improvement, so they can help> Some of them may have additional book sources available with them (unfortunately, I'm only interested in history of London Buses after 1995, so don't have many books myself). However, I do think a speedy fail was a bit extreme, and could have been given reviews by more editors to see where else the article could be improved before meeting the good article criteria. But Thanks for telling where to improve, and hopefully it'll be rectified as soon as possible. Class455 (talk) 14:43, 11 August 2016 (UTC)