Talk:Floral design/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Colin M (talk · contribs) 19:09, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I can tell you've put a lot of work into expanding this article! It's thorough in its coverage of different aspects of the topic and well illustrated. Unfortunately, it's very far from meeting the Verifiability part of the GA criteria, so I'm going to quickfail it for now.

The density of citations is somewhat low. There are some statements of fact that don't have citations and definitely need them (e.g. "Egyptians were the first to use cut flowers and arrangements"), and it's unusual for a GA-level article to have whole paragraphs without any citations. For example, the "Tools" section is 7 paragraphs long, and only one of those has any citations.

But the most significant issue is that, of the existing citations, many (most?) are not to reliable sources. Blogs are usually not reliable sources unless they're written by an established subject matter expert or they have a reputation for a rigorous editorial/fact-checking process. Most of the blogs and web sources cited here seem to be low-quality commercial content. The Garden Club of Virginia pdf which is cited several times is probably also not reliable (no individually named author(s), and it seems unlikely that this private club follows the same kind of editorial processes for its publications that mainstream publishing houses or press outlets do). But I notice that that pdf does have a "Bibliography" section which lists a lot of books on this topic which seem to be reliable sources. That's probably a good place to start looking for solid sources.

Sourcing is the biggest issue here, but I'll mention a few more minor points that I noticed:


 * The "History" section is very long - maybe half as long as the article it's summarizing. I would consider cutting it down.
 * If possible, it would be interesting to know who came up with the seven design principles and five elements described in the article, and when
 * There seems to currently be some overlap in scope between this article and Floristry. I would consider whether they could be divided more cleanly.
 * The introduction enumerates different categories of floral arrangements (vase arrangements, wreaths, nosegays, garlands, festoons, boutonnieres, corsages, and bows). I was hoping that the body would elaborate on these different types.

I hope you'll consider renominating the article after doing some work on the sourcing. I think you've got a good start here. Colin M (talk) 19:09, 22 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you for taking the time to review the article; I spent many hours working on it! Citations and references were my biggest concern when nominating, so thank you for giving me a base of what needs to be changed in order to improve the article (especially the bibliography section on the Garden Club pdf)! I will quickly get to work on adjusting the refs, trimming the history section, and describing the different types of arrangements.
 * Once again, I thank you for your time and suggestions. I hope one day this article can be of good status! 01:40, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Jmaxx37 (talk) 01:40, 23 March 2023 (UTC)