Talk:LW6/8/GA2

GA Reassessment
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.''

There are some groups of very similar articles at GA level, usually created by the same people per group. This also leads to these articles all having the same or very similar problems, and if one of them needs reassessment, they are likely to all need it.

One such group are the articles on Paralympic skiing classifications: LW1 (classification), LW2 (classification), LW3 (classification), LW4 (classification), LW5/7, LW6/8, LW9, LW10, LW11, and LW12, and to a lesser degree the parent articles Para-alpine skiing, Para-alpine skiing classification and Para-Nordic skiing classification.

All are quite good in some parts, but are poorly written collections of seemingly random facts in other bits, and have their fair share of errors as well. Overcapitalization (of all skiing events, but also words like "an Ophthalmologist") is one typical problem, though not the worst.

As an example of the LW articles, let's look at LW6/8.
 * End of the lead: "Events this classification has been eligible for include the 1984 Winter Olympics Exhibition Competition, 1986 World Disabled Ski Championships, 1988 World Winter Games for the Disabled, 1990 Disabled Alpine World Championships and 2002 Winter Paralympics. Skiers in this class include 2006 New Zealander Winter Paralympian Anthony Field." A seemingly random selection of events, and an utterly random selection of one skier without an article (while we do have articles on other skiers in this category).
 * ✅ removed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:58, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * "Skiers in this class may injure themselves while skiing. Between 1994 and 2006, the German national para-Alpine skiing team had a skier in the LW6/8 class that had an injury while skiing. At the end of team training while free skiing, the skier fractured the head of their tibia." And this is important enough to be included in an article about this classification because...?
 * ✅ removed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:58, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * "In the men and women's biathlon, this classification was again grouped with standing classes in the 7.4 km race with 2 shooting stages 12.5 km race which had four shooting stages." This makes no sense, some words seem to be missing. The 7.4 km race should be a 7.5 km race...
 * ✅ reworded. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:58, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * And then the last section, "Competitors": "Skiers in this class include 2006 New Zealander Winter Paralympian Anthony Field". yep, it is our friend from the lead section again, who now gets his own section for himself alone, for no discernible reason.
 * Somebody wanted examples of athletes in the different classifications, but we didn't want to use Australians all the time (the easiest option), as this was perceived as a bias. I tried to get more written about athletes from other countries, and have had some success with the British and Germans. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:58, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * This is not an exhaustive list, we have wrong and inconsistent capitalization, more typos ("single supper arm amputation", "skiwers"), and so on.
 * Sorry, I cannot find these. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:58, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Or take LW10. From the lead: "LW10 skiers have been eligible to compete at the 2002 Winter Paralympics, 2005 IPC Nordic Skiing World Championships and 2009 Alpine World Championships." Only then? Not on other games and championships? Or were these the first three? As far as I can tell, these three were chosen randomly. The events at the end seem to be equally random, and the number of competitors need to be taken with a grain of salt (e.g. "At the 2009 Alpine World Championships, the class was grouped with other sitting classes with one male and one female LW10 skier in their respective downhill events." isn't true, there were more males competing but only one finished all runs.
 * ✅ Corrected. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:00, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

For the other articles, we can look at an article like Para-alpine skiing (or is it "Paralympic alpine skiing", start of the lead?): the section "Paralympics" has loads of irrelevant information (which event was held on which day in which Paralympics?), with the number of competitors per class and gender for two events at the 2010 games given in detail, but not for most other Games or events. Worse, the numbers given for 2010 are wrong, you can compare them here.

Para-Nordic skiing classification contains things like an out of the blue "Nonetheless, in 2006, skiers with amputation still had a medical component to their classification assessment." (end of the history section), biathlon target sizes which seem to be incorrect, sentences like "In the United States, where competitors with intellectual disabilities in events governed by the Special Olympics, [...]" which don't make sense, and so on. The "Process" section goes into detail about Canada and Australia, without a clear reason why these two deserve extra attention. The "Paralympic" section starts with the same sentence twice (first and third sentence). Similary, the first and last line of the last paragraph give us the same information. Why we should know the names the Paralympic classifiers of the 2002 games is not clear... You get things like "The 10 km event was open to LW1 to LW9, and H to D.", but "H to D" is never explained in the article.

Basically, none of these seems to meet the GA requirements and would need quite a lot of work to get them at that level. Fram (talk) 10:53, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Doesn't seem like much work. I will get going on them over the next few days. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:02, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

I have now delisted this. Looking at e.g. LW1 (classification), more than 6 months after the GA review was initiated, the article still has things like " In the Biathlon, athletes with amputations can use a rifle support while shooting.[17]" and "In the Biathlon, all Paralympic athletes shoot from a prone position.[17]" (LW1 isn't a classification in Biathlon), and "At the 2002 Winter Paralympics, the LW1, LW4, LW5 and LW6 classes were combined for the women's downhill, Giant Slalom and Slalom events, while on the men's side, LW1, LW3, LW5 and LW9 were combined for the downhill and Giant Slalom events.[26] ": the source given is a deadlink, but this claim isn't supported by the Paralympics result site, which claims that the grouping was "Women's Downhill LW3,4,6/8,9", "Men's Downhill LW3,5/7,9" and so on. 11:31, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

For LW6/8, remaining problems include "Unlike other para-Alpine disciplines, in slalom skiers are more likely to use a partial ski pole or a prosthetic to hold a ski pole" (LW6/8 alpine is not allowed a prosthesis), "The 2011/2012 alpine-skiing season factoring for LW6/8.1 was 0.9902 for Slalom, 0.995 for Giant Slalom, 0.9969 for Super-G and 0.998 for downhill, and for LW6/8.2 was 0.9926 for slalom, 1 for giant slalom, 1 for Super-G and 1 for downhill" (8.1 vs. 8.2 is not explained at all in the article; notice also the very inconsistent capitalizations here) and "At the 1998 Winter Paralympics, the women's LW1, LW3, LW4, LW5 and LW6 classes competed in one group" (according to this isn't correct). This is only listing some faftual problems, and ignores typo's and content decisions like including irrelevant information such as "At the 2009 IPC Alpine World Championships, there were four women and nine men from this class in the standing downhill event.". Fram (talk) 12:33, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

In general, these articles need to focus on their actual subject, the sport classification. Sections like "Technique", with sentences like "After this, the skier learns how to get on and off a ski lift." or "The skier then learns how to do a straight run, and then is taught how to get on and off the chair lift." are really not suited for an article on a classification for highly skilled sporters competing at the Paralympics and other major championships and come across as patronizing and insulting. I would simply remove the technique section from all these articles. Similar problems occur in other sections, e.g. "Skiers in the LW10 class can injure themselves while skiing." No kidding... The "events" section seems like a random selection of events with some trivia added, and rather meaningless sentences like "This classification has been able to compete at different skiing competitions." Something like "At the 2009 IPC Alpine World Championships, there were no women and thirteen men from this class the sitting downhill event" adds no general information to the article about the classification (and has a typo in it). Many articles also mention a "7.4 km race" in biathlon. This should be 7.5km, which is a standard distance for this event. All these articles need a thorough, critical review, checked against the sources, and keeping in mind which bits of information are necessary, and which are superfluous. Fram (talk) 13:16, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I have now also delisted the final 3 articles in the GA review. In looking at the changes that were made at the start of this GA review to avoid the GA delisting and keep these articles listed as GAs, images were added to Para-alpine skiing classification. The result is that the first two images at Para-alpine skiing classification are two able-bodied skiers, which is insulting in general and certainly on a GA. Apart from that, many of the original problems still haven't been addressed (e.g. in the same article, we have capitalization issues like "They are tested based on medical classification by an Ophthalmologist." or "Downhill was open to the LW classification, the Super G had a blind event and an LW event, the Giant was open to blind and LW classes, and the slalom was open to the LW classification." Factual errors also remain: "There were 25 men and 18 women in the downhill standing classes": no, 28 men and 13 women; "25 men and 10 women in the downhill sitting classes": no, 28 men and 6 women... It's information that shouldn't even be included on these articles, but if it is there, it should be correct to be worthy of a GA label. (the same wrong numbers can also be found at another delisted article, Para-alpine skiing). Fram (talk) 10:10, 7 November 2016 (UTC)