Talk:Japanese Committee on Trade and Information/GA2

GA Review
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Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 23:33, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think this is close to GA quality yet.

This is based almost entirely on primary sources (US newspaper stories written during World War II), which can be expected to have a strong anti-Japanese bias. They are reliable for factual information about this case, but are also used for editorial/interpretive information (e.g. the reason for its disbandment). Secondary sources do exist: there is one cited already in the article (but not used for much) but Google books finds 33 hits with coverage of this story, and this is only the English-language side; I would expect to see also Japanese-language sources. This seems to be not in accordance with WP:RS, which states "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible." and "Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (op-eds) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact." That is to say, if we wish to have more than the bare-bones factual side of the story we need to look more broadly for sources that are distant enough from these events to have a less-biased perspective on them. (See good article criteria #2b, 3a, and 4)

Additionally, although this is easily fixed, the article violates WP:SEEALSO (having a see-also section whose contents are already prominently linked in the main text; see GAC 1b) and it missing courtesy links even for sources easily found online (as not all sources are nor are required to be; but see good article criterion 2a). The lead does not adequately summarize the body (GAC 1b) and juxtaposes concepts in order to lead the reader to conclusions not supported by the sources (WP:SYNTH; the lead claims that the trial was a response to Pearl Harbor but this is contradicted by sources claiming that the investigation into Japanese propaganda began before Pearl Harbor; GAC 2c). And I'm skeptical whether the fair-use justification for the news photos is adequate (criterion 6a). —David Eppstein (talk) 23:33, 26 November 2015 (UTC)