Talk:Dorothy Spiers/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 07:49, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Judging this against the numbered Good Article criteria:
 * 1. Writing quality
 * The prose is clear and understandable. The lead properly summarizes the text, and I didn't find any other style issues. No changes needed.


 * 2. Sourcing
 * References are properly formatted in Citation Style 1 (what you get with the cite templates). I have to take the ODNB source on good faith as I lack a subscription but it is as reliable as they come. I think its url parameter should be replaced by 10.1093/ref:odnb/63854 as dois are simpler and have better long-term stability than urls. (Also, it should use cite encyclopedia not cite web but I don't know whether that will make any visible difference in the article).
 * The only sources whose reliability looks dubious are the two footnotes to Findmypast, a genealogy hosting site that from its article here appears to host self-published work (I couldn't check this because again it requires a subscription) and that the reliable sources noticeboard has deemed generally unreliable (see Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 256 for most recent discussion, earlier this year). I think those sources need to be replaced by better ones.
 * In the sentence "While working there, she studied for the actuarial examinations at the Institute of Actuaries, enrolling at the institute in 1920." I initially thought the sentence failed verification because the 1920 date is not in the first source, footnote [2] (it is in footnote [3]). I think it would be better to move footnote [2] to the comma in the sentence to make clearer which information comes from where. Otherwise the sourcing checks out and Earwig found no problematic copying from sources.


 * 3. Coverage
 * The article is short, but appropriately so: given the sources I was able to see, I didn't see anything missing, and I don't think puffing it up to a longer length with the information we have available would be an improvement. The only two pieces of overly-detailed writing I found were in the infobox: "Brent, London, Middlesex, England" doesn't need the "London", and "being the first woman to qualify as an actuary in the UK" should be shorter, maybe "first British female actuary" or something like that. Certainly "being the" is completely redundant here. And I would prefer not to have the spouse and children in the lead and infobox; it's not a requirement that you actually populate every field of the infobox that you can, and they're not relevant enough to the subject's notability to be given such prominent positions in the article.


 * 4. Neutrality
 * No changes needed.


 * 5. Stability
 * The only recent edits are the ones made to prepare this for a GA nomination, and are not problematic with respect to stability. No changes needed.


 * 6. Illustration
 * There is one fair-use portrait of the subject, an appropriate amount of illustration. It appears to have an appropriate fair-use rationale and low-res image size. As the main image of an infobox, it has and needs no caption. No changes needed.

So, mostly only minor changes needed, with the exception of replacing the FindMyPast sources. One of them is redundant, so it could just be removed; the other may also entail removal of her husband's death date (not especially crucial to the article) if no replacement source can be found.

—David Eppstein (talk) 08:32, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your review. I've made the suggested amendments. Cowlibob (talk) 10:13, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * All requested changes done, passing. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:31, 16 December 2019 (UTC)