Talk:Friedrich Hayek/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: FeydHuxtable (talk · contribs) 19:50, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Lots of good work in this article, but it's quite far from meeting all GA criteria, so much so that I may not even fully assess all criteria before failing. My plan is to leave this for a week to see what if any progress is made in addressing initial  concerns. So after 7 days, I'll either fail or progress to a more thorough review, which would specify numerous other improvements needed before this can pass. If we get to that stage I'll allow at least another 3 weeks for these to be attained.

@BasedMises, if this all sounds like too much hard work, no worries, just let me know & I can quick fail.

The full review will be more in depth than is standard for GA. As described here I normally like to make things real simple for the nominator when I'm reviewing, addressing minor non compliances with GA criteria myself. But this article is for von Hayek, one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Huh, in the late 90s which was in some respects the peak of neoliberalisms intellectual influence, many commentators were saying von Hayek had turned out to have more enduring impact even than Lord Keynes! For this reason von Hayek may be worth extra effort, rather than a quick fail as is more standard for articles so far from meeting the GA criteria. But also, I'd want some said criteria to be met at a somewhat higher standard than would be required for other articles. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:50, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Preliminary concerns
Probably the single criteria that needs the most work is broadness. As an example, re his legacy, much of the content seems written from a POV of what might seem significant to a Chicago school adherent, rather than the broad global view that's warranted for someone as important as von Hayek. There's a very long Friedman quote starting "My interest in public policy..." just on how von Hayek influenced Friedman's intellectual development. A step in the right direction would be to replace that with a different Friedman quote that illustrates von Hayek's wider impact. Eg. "There is no figure who had more of an influence, no person had more of an influence on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek" Does this make sense?

Then you could move on perhaps to mentioning the current resurgence of von Hayek influence in Brazil. - not saying you need to do this specificially, this is more an example of the sort of broad coverage I'd want to see.

To help meet the broadness criteria more generally, it would perhaps be a big help if you read one his book length biographies. Before I began a series of major edits to bring Lord Keynes to GA status, I'd read several whole biographies including the lengthy classic by Lord Skidelsky. I'm not saying you need to read even one full bio, but it would definitely help to improve the quality of sourcing if cites from one of the more prestigious biographies were integrated into the article.

Moving on to issues that fall somewhat between the broadness & neutrality criteria, I feel theres' too much focus on von Hayek's supposed influence as an Economist (where the mainstream view tends to regard him as not being especially significant) and less so on his political influence and the fact he's been seen as perhaps the most influential public intellectual of the twentieth century

To address pure neutrality concerns, while there is a reasonable amount of criticism if one reads the whole article carefully, I feel bits are missing. The article is a little light on the criticism von Hayek got for his harsh treatment of his first wife. Before that, he was often regarded as someone of excellent personal morality. After the divorce, even Lionel Robins, who had been one of his principal benefactors & sponsors, more or less frozen him out for over a decade, he was so appalled by von Hayek's actions. It might be nice to add some of the criticism from someone like good Nicholas Wapshott, who said von Hayek was "an unashamed elitist and individualist". To be clear, I'm not saying that overall the article is unduly +ve about von Hayek, in fact I'd like to see some more key +ve criticism added as well as negative.

While its true that there's been renewed interest in von Hayek since the 2008 crises, it's also the case that overall his sort of free market thinking has lost influence since then, and this isn't sufficiently reflected in the article.

In terms of failing prose quality, one of the first things to address would be MOS:Lead compliance. And on this subject I feel the lead sentence needs tweaking. I don't think it's quite true that he's "best known for his defence of classical liberalism" I'm not sure the given source even fully supports that, and I'm not bothering to verify that as we shouldn’t be using a >30 year old source for such a key claim on such as important article. The first paragraph of the lede is all some reader will read - it warrants more attention.

I doubt many editors would have the time or energy to address enough of the above to stop me failing after the 7 days are up on 8 July. So I hope you won't be disheartened if that happens. Okay, I think that's enough for now, hopefully there's at least something of value for you in this review. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:50, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Review wrap up
As there's been no progress in addressing the above concerns after 7 days, the article has failed its GA nomination. Before resubmitting, I'd suggest some work should go into addressing the above, and also the GA related points mentioned on the talk page here (Some reviewers might have insisted on each point being fully addressed before passing, personally I'd have been happy to pass with about half the external links still remaining, about half the von Hayek quotes could have remained, and I'd not have insisted on uncited sources being removed as there is a case for allowing them per WP:GENREF. )

I'd guess most editors would need at least 100 hours to get this done, and further points are likely to be raised before actual promotion. This is one of the more challenging topics. On the other hand, other reviewers might be more easy going than myself, so possibly a later re-nom could succeed with less effort. Whatever you decide, thanks for the time put into improving the article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:47, 8 July 2021 (UTC)