Talk:Glengoyne distillery/GA2

GA Review
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GA review
This article worries me, as currently presented it is tending towards advertising and WP:Spam. Whilst the core of the article is good, much of the material is taken directly from the company's own web site; and comments such as "Glengoyne does not use peat smoke to dry their barley, but instead favours the use of warm air", which appear twice are not English, merely marketing hyperbole. Why not say "Glengoyne does not use peat smoke to dry their barley, it uses only warm air".

Much of the text and illustrations in the Products section appears to be marketing material from the company. Why promote the company's own assessment of "nose", what is encyclopaedic about this? Ditto, why promote corporate hospitality at the company's visitor centre.

Much of the comments in GA/1 have been ignored. It was failed last time because the reviewer considered that more than one week was needed to address the deficiencies, yet the article was re-presented for WP:GAN in not much more than a week with comments from the last reviewer mostly ignored. The article, if it is to make GA, must not be presented as free advertising for the products, using marketing material taken from the company' web site.

In the circumstances, I'm making this down as a failure. Much of the article is good, don't pollute it with WP:Spam.Pyrotec (talk) 14:58, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria


 * 1) Is it reasonably well written?
 * A. Prose quality:
 * B. MoS compliance:
 * 1) Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
 * A. References to sources:
 * B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
 * C. No original research:
 * 1) Is it broad in its coverage?
 * A. Major aspects:
 * B. Focused:
 * 1) Is it neutral?
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * 1) Is it stable?
 * No edit wars, etc:
 * 1) Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
 * A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
 * B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * 1) Is it stable?
 * No edit wars, etc:
 * 1) Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
 * A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
 * B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * Pass or Fail:

GA Fail due to insufficient consideration of the last GA review. Remove the WP:Spam and use the core material, together with a proper consideration of Scotch Whisky, as per the last GA reviewer's suggestions. Pyrotec (talk) 14:58, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Issues
Note: The below was posted on the reviewers talk page for clarification and here for visibility purposes.
 * My answers appear in line.Pyrotec (talk) 14:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I have a few issues with your review I'd just like to clarify:
 * comments such as "Glengoyne does not use peat smoke to dry their barley, but instead favours the use of warm air", which appear twice are not English, merely marketing hyperbole. Why not say "Glengoyne does not use peat smoke to dry their barley, it uses only warm air". - Can you explain how this is hyperbole? It does not exaggerate any fact and I feel actually is clearer than your reworded statement. Saying "it uses only warm air" is ambiguous (do they use warm air by choice? Are they forced to use warm air rather than peat smoke due to some geological feature? etc) where as saying they "favour the use" clearly shows that it is a choice made by the distillery.
 * You have answered this yourself. The statement can be made as "Glengoyne does not use peat smoke to dry their barley, they choose to use only warm air". Again, why say "the original warehouse built by George Connell can still be found on the site today as the shop and visitor reception area with the distillery boasting eight working warehouses with a total capacity of nearly two million litres (4.5 million bottles) or spirits", using "boasting" is hardly an objective statement?Pyrotec (talk) 14:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes many of the pictures in the product section are promotional images, see the individual image rationals for the reasoning behind this and why it would be virtually impossible to obtain free images of all these whiskies.
 * I don't object to the use of the images themselves, it is the manner in which they are presented in the table. The majority of the Products section (below the two paragraphs of referenced text) is WP:SPAM. The Glenlivet is a GA, it manages to provide comparable information without providing free advertising for the company, i.e. SPAM.Pyrotec (talk) 14:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * "why promote corporate hospitality at the company's visitor centre." I don't see how stating "The Glengoyne visitor centre attracts over 35,000 visitors a year, as well as entertaining corporate parties" is promoting. By your rational surely by saying that over 35,000 vistors come per year is promoting the distillery then? These are encyclopaedic facts that have been properly referenced. 35,000 visitors a year do come to the visitors centre and they do take corporate parties, like many places I have read about (also stating this fact) on Wikipedia. In regards to the reference being first party, who else would have the statistics on how many visitors come per annum other than the distillery? Any other source would just be quoting figures released by the distillery as is the case in many statistics like this.
 * I raised no objections to any references to 35,000 visitors a year. My objection is to the phrase: "as well as entertaining corporate parties". Incidentally Ref 6 does not mention corporate hospitality, but it does mention 35,000 visitors.Pyrotec (talk) 14:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * "Mostly based on the company's web site." - 9/23 sources is mostly? - First party sources are only used when I couldn't find a suitable 3rd party source. More than half the sources are not based on the company's website.
 * Ref 23 is used (I think) 28 times, ref 4 is used 6 times, ref 19 twice. OK, its 9/23 for sources, but it is hardly 9/23 for citations.Pyrotec (talk)


 * "comments from the last reviewer mostly ignored" - I object to that statement, I copied the last review into my sandbox and worked through it (Note, not all done have been checked) attempting to follow the previous reviewers suggestions. A quick glance in the history and difference between the time of the first review and the second will show many differences.
 * I checked the article history as part of my GAreview. So I know what changes were made.Pyrotec (talk) 14:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Please reply on my talk page. Note I have also copied this onto the review page for visibility purposes.

Thanks,
 * Cabe 6403  (Talk•Sign!) 22:30, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Further expansion

 * Much of the text in the article is at GA standard and I'm happy to accept that you have taken on board much of the detailed comments made by the last reviewer in improving grammar. However perhaps two thirds of the article by "page" length, and by that I mean the tables/images, is devoted to product marketing, i.e. WP:SPAM. Can I suggest that you look at The Glenlivet, as those editors seem to have avoided falling into this trap.


 * Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia; and its content is intended to be encyclopaedic and not to regurgitate spin and hypo taken from company web sites. These company's have marketing departments, it is not the function of wikipedia to provide free copy and free advertising.
 * I regard "Glengoyne does not use peat smoke to dry their barley, but instead favours the use of warm air" and "boasting eight working warehouses" as marketing hypo.


 * Again, why push corporate hospitality at their visit centre, I'm sure that if Rangers or Celtic wish to take clients out for a "nosh up" they will not use wikipedia to search out a venue. Incidentally Ref 6 does not mention corporate hospitality, but it does mention 35,000 visits
 * The Rob Roy is a nice story, but it is uncritically included in the article as fact. By all means include it, but let's have some objectivity. Roy Rob is a character, i.e. he does not exist. You have provided the following information from the company website: "the character Rob Roy, known for many illegal activities, is believed to have hidden in an oak tree just 300 metres from the distillery to avoid detection by the local law enforcement". So critical questions, is there any conformation of this in the Rob Roy novels? Sir Walter Scott died in 1832 and the company did not become legal until the following year, so how do we know it was their still (it was hardly a distillery, just a collection of stills, possibly only one) (and the company web site, ref 4, says at least 18 stills were operating in the area, it does not claim that they were theirs)? The UK did not use metric measure in the 18th and 19th centuries, so the distance would not have been measured as 300 metres (possibly 1,000 ft).
 * The infobox states that rain water is used - nice bit of marketing spin - the article and the references quoted state that water is taken from the burn.

The way forward
Much of the text is at GA standard or can be made so. Specifically:
 * Cut the hypo about "favouring" and "boasting" and use objective statements.
 * Clarify where the water comes from, its burn water not rain water.
 * By all means mention the company's marketing use of Rob Roy, but provide an objective assessment as to whether these claims can be verified elsewhere.
 * Cut out the free advertising and promotion of the product that forms about two-thirds of the "page" length of this article.
 * Follow the recommendation of the first GA reviewer to look at book sources. The suggestion was made that Amazon be used. Incidentally, your userpage states that you are a student at Strathclyde University. I ran the University of Strathclyde Library catalogue search for whisky and came up with the following 69 hits:
 * The distillery is only 30 miles of so from the University, in the Campsie's, so I did a search on the the University of Strathclyde Library catalogue search for "Campsie" and came up with 12 hits; and I ran it against "Glengoyne" and came up with one hit in the Main Library Special Coll.Robertson - use in Library only.
 * The distillery has been there a long time, so I'm sure it will be mentioned in books such as The Campsie's in old pictures (I've not checked whether this exists); and there are likely to be mention of it (and probably pictures) at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. (and I do know how long it talks to walk from Strathclyde uni to the Mitchell Library).
 * I don't have borrowing rights at Strathclyde University, nor the Mitchell Library, and its not my article.

In summary, I rejected the article on the basis that the article as a whole is out of balance, much of it is WP:SPAM not objective reporting; and that I considered that it had been resubmitted for GAN too soon after the last GAN and that comments made by the last GAN reviewer were not acted upon. For me that means uncritical acceptance of what the company puts out in it marketing material and the limiting of searches for other references to whisky websites.Pyrotec (talk) 14:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Pyrotec (talk) 14:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)