Talk:I'm Going to Tell You a Secret/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Jburlinson (talk · contribs) 23:08, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll be glad to review this article. I'm sorry you've had to wait so long for a response to your nomination. Comments to follow in the next 1-7 days. Jburlinson (talk) 23:08, 8 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking the time to review this Jburlinson. :) — Indian: BIO  · [ ChitChat  ] 03:59, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to all who helped develop this article. There's a lot of good information here that I'm sure would be of interest to folks following Madonna's career. I see a number of issues, however, that need to be addressed before the article passes a GA review.

Here are a few of these concerns:
 * There are many grammar and prose corrections that need to be made. I started doing this in the lead and came to the conclusion that my own copy-editing skills may not be adequate to catching all the problems. I'd suggest submitting a request to the Guild of Copy Editors. This is frequently done as preparation for a Good Article Review. Before requesting a thorough copy-edit, though, it might be good to consider the following issues.
 * One of the GA criteria is compliance with WP MOS on lead sections. The current lead is not so much a summary of the article as a selection of quotes from the text of the article.
 * There's too much copy-and-paste from O'Brien's Madonna: Like an Icon. This is sometimes acknowledged in a well-placed citation, but without in-text attribution or quote marks.  Examples: Madonna "invited a select group of friends and co-workers to watch a rough three-hour cut of the film at a local theater in Notting Hill, and write their comments afterwards in a questionnaire", and "a full moon sailed over the crowd and the rain came down" (although the word "crowd" is substituted for "stage" in the original). Please see WP:PLAGFORMS for a discussion about this type of problem. A good essay on this topic can be found at WP:PARAPHRASE
 * The synopsis is quite lengthy and detailed, exceeding the rule of thumb of 700 or fewer words. Although there is not a cut-and-dried prohibition as to the length of a plot summary/synopsis, concision is important and unnecessary detail should be eliminated. The current synopsis feels almost like a scene-by-scene description.
 * After randomly sampling a few references, there are a number of instances of what looks to be original research or synthesis. It would probably be good to review all the article's references to be sure that paraphrase doesn't turn into synthesis. Here's a couple of examples:
 * 1) From "concept and development": "She further explained that during Truth or Dare she did not have a family hence the mischievous acts with her dancers, unlike I'm Going to Tell You a Secret where she felt much balanced.[26]" -- Although the source does mention Madonna's family, it doesn't support the assertion that she felt more balanced at the time she made her newer documentary.
 * 2) From "Background of tour"; "She incorporated the images from the installation in the tour, whose name was in reality a dig at Madonna's critics.[9][10][11]". -- None of the three citations supports the statement about the name being a dig at the critics. The link to the third cite is now broken, so it's possible that this source originally mentioned it. (The second cite doesn't seem to relate to the topic at all, being about a scottish bagpiper.)

So, at this point, I'm going to fail the article. At first, I thought of putting the article on hold for a week, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't give editors enough time to make all needed revisions. In particular, it could easily take more than a week to get a thorough copy edit through the process. I'm hoping the extra time will give editors plenty of opportunity to re-work the article carefully in light of the Good article criteria and the editing guidelines for reviewing an article for GA status. Thanks for your interest in creating top-quality articles for Wikipedia. Jburlinson (talk) 19:31, 11 November 2013 (UTC)