Talk:Chaos magic/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Asilvering (talk · contribs) 06:38, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

(Criteria marked are unassessed)
 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a. (prose, spelling, and grammar):
 * b. (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a. (reference section):
 * b. (citations to reliable sources):
 * c. (OR):
 * d. (copyvio and plagiarism):
 * 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.:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
 * a. (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales):
 * b. (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/fail:
 * 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.:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
 * a. (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales):
 * b. (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/fail:
 * No edit wars, etc.:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
 * a. (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales):
 * b. (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/fail:
 * b. (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/fail:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/fail:
 * Pass/fail:

Comments
QF on criteria 3; there are also still some old maintenance tags in the article.

I see huge gaps here before I've even started in on a source check. Most problematically, this article leans heavily on primary sources because it is lacking significant academic coverage of chaos magic and related events and practitioners. That isn't to say there is no academic work cited here, but I find that the balance is off and that the quality of sources appears questionable. Some of the existing academic sources are PhD theses from long enough ago that the author's book or articles should be citable instead. Primary sources are used for key claims like They attempted to strip away the symbolic, ritualistic, theological or otherwise ornamental aspects of these occult traditions, to leave behind a set of basic techniques that they believed to be the basis of magic. This balance issue leads to some major omissions - what has chaos magic's effect been on pop culture, for example? What we have here is halfway between an answer to that question and a list of trivia. And what are those "set of basic techniques" anyway? Only three are listed in the article. What relationship do these have to the "basic techniques", or are they one and the same? There are some key concepts that are well enough known in pop culture that I would expect to see them at least gestured to here (sigils, for example, appears alongside another key concept, gnosis, once in the first paragraph and never again; neither are explained). The history section is dense with information, but much of it isn't contextualized enough to be helpful. For example: In 1976-77 the first chaos magic organization Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) was announced. Ok, who were they, and what did they do besides "something to do with chaos magic"? Do they matter in some way other than being the first? And how can something be "announced" over a period of time?

Most of the "works cited" are not cited. I would suggest moving the uncited ones to Further Reading, separated based on primary/secondary if feasible. I'd keep them in the article for now in case they're useful for expanding it, but if this is submitted for GA again, uncited sources in Further Reading should probably be cut to a handful at most. Probably a good idea to find some more useful images before trying a second nomination, too.

Sorry for the downer. Good luck with improving the article! -- asilvering (talk) 07:17, 17 March 2023 (UTC)