Talk:Dorus Rijkers/GA1

GA Review
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I hope to give you my initial comments shortly, with more detailed observations in 24 hours or so. Brianboulton (talk) 15:48, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

(Later) I have read through the article. I am sorry to say that in my view it does not at present approach Good Article standard. The article, at only 700 words long, is seriously short of the detail that is expected in a Good Article biography. Information should be given about his place of birth, who is parents were, any other available family background information. In the article we first meet him in 1872 when he is already a captain. We have no information about his early seafaring career, like when he first went to sea and the sorts of ships he sailed in. Later, we are told that he saved "hundreds of lives", without a single description of a specific incident. It may be that you need to extend considerably your range of sources.

The article is also almost completely lacking in in-line citations - 5 in all, three in the legacy section, one in the infobox. There is an open "citation needed" tag dating from May 2007! I tried this but was unable to locate the Rijkers biography.

There are also numerous MoS issues, some of a fairly minor nature (e.g. use of boldface within the text), others, such as an inadequate lead section, more significant. All in all, given that the article has failed GA before, I recommend that you do not bring it quickly back to GA. I think you need to look more closely at the GA criteria, also at the nature of other Good Article biographies, and after you have extended it, submit the article for a peer review so as to collect a broad range of comments.

On the plus side, I think that the prose standard has improved since the last GA, and with a few tweaks would be generally acceptable. It is the lack of broad coverage, and the lack of citations, that are the main problems to be resolved. For the present, I have no choice but to fail the article. Sorry, Brianboulton (talk) 17:32, 30 September 2008 (UTC)