Talk:John Higgins/GA1

GA Review
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Nominator:

Reviewer: Asilvering (talk · contribs) 16:33, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi there! I'll do a brief look now and should get through most of the rest this weekend. Any edits that are sufficiently minor to not bother you with, I'll do myself, but of course feel free to dispute/revert any that you disagree with. -- asilvering (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2024 (UTC)


 * GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):  d (copyvio and plagiarism):
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * 1) It is stable.
 * No edit wars, etc.:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:

Lead

 * 1) We shouldn't need any citations here, since this should all be attested in the body of the article. -- asilvering (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Images

 * 1) File:John Higgins at Snooker German Masters (Martin Rulsch) 2014-01-29 09.jpg: I suggest removing this image as there is already a photo of him at this competition in the infobox, and that one is a better photo. -- asilvering (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
 * 2) The other two images check out. -- asilvering (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
 * 3) Any chance of finding an earlier photo and a later one? We just have two photos from 2013/2014. If it's impossible to find any compatibly licensed photos of him, can you think of any relevant images you could include? Mostly just looking to break up this wall-of-text where possible. -- asilvering (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I do wish there was indeed more images, but we do struggle with snooker images. The earliest is 2008, if that's of help.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:56, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Gosh, I hate to do this,, but this looks like a drive-by nomination? You're #30 for authorship and #24 by number of edits. What's going on here? -- asilvering (talk) 01:10, 22 March 2024 (UTC)


 * yeah, I'm not really sure why I nominated this. I'm making my way through the article to get it up to snuff if you do fancy reviewing it, but I could totally understand why you wouldn't want too as it should be in place before the article is nominated. Apologies.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:33, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'll happily leave the review open for a bit if you think you'll be able to get through it relatively quickly. If you're not up for doing that in the next week or so it might make more sense to withdraw the nom? Up to you. -- asilvering (talk) 03:19, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi, I've been through the article and done some work. To my eye it's a lot better looking and flows to a greater degree.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:45, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Crud. I was leaving this alert in my inbox on purpose so I wouldn't forget about it, but now I've clicked on it. You're now liable to vanish into my graveyard of forgotten open tabs. Please do ping me if I don't get to this by this weekend. -- asilvering (talk) 20:06, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

, I tried to go through and do a typical prose check, but I quickly got pretty stuck - there's almost nothing in the first three career subsections after all, just match results, basically a database in prose form. I'm not seeing analysis or even summary. I think this is a big problem for 3b, but also for 1a. It looks like it would take a lot of work to condense this down into appropriate summary style. But maybe it will be easier to clean up than it looks. What are your thoughts? -- asilvering (talk) 02:47, 4 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't really know what you are expecting. It's pretty typical to have a career summary that talks about tournament results and career rankings.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 06:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sure, but it doesn't really talk about them - all it does is state the scores. If a chart or a database would be a more effective way of getting information across, we're not really looking at encyclopedic information. I note that Ronnie O'Sullivan, for example, has a much more effectively narrativized career summary. -- asilvering (talk) 07:26, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * That O'Sullivan article is a mess. He's also the most polarising figure in the sport. We don't want a list cruft, what we do is summarise what the player's career was like. If they constantly state crazy things and get disqualified from tournaments, then we mention that. Our job is to state how the player got on first and foremost in their career. Per our MOS, we don't comment on whether or not a player played well, or how easy/good a shot was, so we comment on how they got on in the tournaments, if they defeat someone notable and the like. The summary style is done on the O'Sullivan article, because we split off the actual career summary to Professional snooker career of Ronnie O'Sullivan because it was so long.
 * See other GAs that don't do this, Ding Junhui, Kyren Wilson, James Cahill (snooker player), Marco Fu, etc.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:37, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Nominator, reviewer, any further progress on this review? Ideally, it should be wrapped up pretty soon. —Ganesha811 (talk) 15:39, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry both, was ill and got behind in everything.
 * , I agree that we don't want listcruft. That isn't what I was suggesting. What I am saying is that this effectively is a list, just in a harder-to-read format. For example, there are twelve paragraphs that cover 2011-2017, and most of them are almost entirely lists of match results. There's some stuff in here that could be usefully pulled out into a narrative, like the bit about how he kept changing cues, etc, but it gets very buried in the list of results. 2017-present covers about the same amount of time and is less than half the size. -- asilvering (talk) 18:37, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hello to both - this review has been open for well over a month and should be closed if consensus cannot be reached soon. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:47, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Lee Vilenski, are you planning to do any edits to the article? -- asilvering (talk) 17:35, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm still not really sure what you require from the article. You are looking at a career section about how a player got on with their career. It is going to have results of how the player got on in tournaments.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:44, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've tried a few different ways to explain this now, so I'm at a loss for what more I can give you. It seems that you are hoping I will simply drop the issue and pass the article? But I won't do that, because it isn't simply a prose issue; it affects several of the other criteria. The problem appears to be that it is sourced mainly to primary sources (match results, database listings, etc). In this case that dependence doesn't cause a WP:OR problem, since the article uses those sources mostly just to say "he won 10-7 against so-and-so". Instead, we end up with a series of facts with no unification or summary; it's just a list of individual primary sources, not a new tertiary source. The potential for this problem is one of the many reasons why wikipedia guidelines emphasize using secondary sources.
 * The lead looks pretty good to me, but it's not really an accurate summary of the article, as required by the GA criteria, given the problems I just described. I'd much prefer that the article changed to match the lead than the other way around. The personal life section contains disconnected facts as well: for example, it mentions his marriage and children, then what sports teams he likes, then his child, then an incident where he was drunk on a plane. I haven't done a full source check, but aside from the primary source issues I mentioned above, I also notice that the mathematics article mentioned at the end of the personal life section (which does not belong here as it is about his career, not his personal life) is about a complex networks approach, which is really rather different from being a complex mathematical study.
 * Since this article is a long way from meeting criteria 1 and 3b, and additionally has at least some criterion 2 concerns, I will unfortunately have to fail this article. -- asilvering (talk) 22:31, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That's absolutely fine. At no point was I expecting you to just pass the article.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 22:36, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you (and sorry for the fail). -- asilvering (talk) 22:38, 6 May 2024 (UTC)