Talk:Joseph-Louis Lagrange/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Nsk92 (talk) 15:51, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Will review this nomination shortly. Nsk92 (talk) 15:51, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

1. In relation to verifiability, criterion 2 of WP:GACR requires in-line citations to be provided for directly quoted statements and for most material facts, with at least one citation per paragraph expected at a minimum. In this regard the article falls far short. There are many direct quotations here but none are supplied with in-line citations. There are several sections and subsections entirely without in-line citations.

2. In relation to criterion 1 of WP:GACR, being well-written and MOS compliance, there are also significant problems. Here are a few of them:
 * Most embedded lists given in the article do not conform to WP:EMBED and should be replaced by prose;
 * There are issues with organization and layout concerning significant degree of duplication. For example, the "Biography" section discusses at length some of Lagrange's mathematical contributions, which is done again in sections 'Work in Berlin" and "Work in France". The Biography section is preceded by "Scientific contribution" section which provides even more duplication. As a result, the current structure of the article is fairly incoherent.

3. There are some issues in relation to criterion 3 of WP:GACR, the breadth of coverage. The coverage of Lagrange's scientific contributions in general is fairly haphazardly organized and in many cases (such as his contributions to algebra and number theory) really need to be elaborated in greater detail beyond isolated sentences here and there. I also feel that more focused discussion (maybe even a separate section) is needed regarding Lagrange's mathematical legacy and influence on modern mathematics. Also, a list of selected publications of Lagrange needs to be added.

Overall, the article is quite far from satisfying WP:GACR at the moment and I feel that a significant extra effort, probably requiring collaboration between several users, is needed to bring the article to the GA standards. Therefore I am marking the current nomination as failed. Subsequent re-nominations after improvements are certainly welcome. The subject of the article is quite important and it'd definitely be valuable to bring this article to the GA level, even though it would not be easy in this case, given the extraordinary breadth of Lagrange's contributions and of his influence. Nsk92 (talk) 16:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)