Talk:Netball/GA4

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

Reviewer: Muboshgu (talk · contribs) 19:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

This article is way overdue a review. I'll read this over and provide a review within a few days. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

The review is below. I'll put this on hold to wait for responses to my comments. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the review. I am not the nominator, but if no one else picks this up I will respond to your comments as I have time. AIR corn (talk) 20:15, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That might be a good idea, since nobody else seems to be moving on this, and I'd hate to fail it considering how close it is to GA. The last edit to the page actually brings up another point I have to add. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:49, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No problem, will look into it this evening. AIR corn (talk) 22:07, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It is best to inform the nominator when you have conducted a review as they may longer be watching the talk page. I just dropped a note off at Pete's. AIR corn (talk) 22:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for notifying me Aircorn, I should have time to look at this tonight! I of course welcome your help in improving the article though, feel free to work on it with me. -Pete (talk) 23:02, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry that I forgot to notify you myself. I'll start striking out things that are done. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria


 * 1) Is it reasonably well written?
 * A. Prose quality:
 * B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
 * 1) Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
 * A. References to sources:
 * B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
 * C. No original research:
 * 1) Is it broad in its coverage?
 * A. Major aspects:
 * B. Focused:
 * 1) Is it neutral?
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * 1) Is it stable?
 * No edit wars, etc:
 * 1) Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
 * A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
 * B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * 1) Is it stable?
 * No edit wars, etc:
 * 1) Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
 * A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
 * B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * Pass or Fail:

Muboshgu, thanks for the review! Much appreciate your putting your attention on this article. I'm heartened to see that you don't have any major/structural problems -- maybe we are finally getting to a good place with this article! I'll go through your detailed comments and work on addressing them in the next day or two. I've taken an initial pass tonight, see inline comments below. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Based on a quick glance at the past review pages and work done on the talk page since, I think you've done a good job of responding to past issues. My specific comments:
 * The first thing I noticed is that there are no citations in the lead. I think a few citations would help, especially when you're talking about timeframes. In this case, I don't have a problem with reusing citations from the body, since there's nothing especially controversial in the lead.
 * The lead has been free of citations for some time, I believe through a couple of reviews. Considering that Lead states that articles on non-controversial topics might have lead sections entirely free of citations, as long as the facts summarized are cited in the body text, are there items here that are controversial enough to require redundant citation? If so, please point them out, and I'll gladly fix it. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Personally, I dislike citations in the lead and try to avoid them whenever possible. Kaldari (talk) 18:26, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is anything anyone would consider controversial there. Maybe the years need citing, though I won't argue if you feel they dont. I think the "According to the IFNA" sentence does need verification. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Check comma usage: (ex: "By 1960 international playing rules...", "As of 2011, IFNA comprises...", "...and in 1924 the first national governing...", "According to Proteas captain Elsje Jordaan it was hoped...", etc.)
 * I'm afraid I'm not sure what to do here. I see the parallel in the examples you've identified; and I see that the use of a comma is not consistent from one to the next. However, it's my understanding that both forms are acceptable, and that the decision of whether or not to use a comma in such a case should take into account the flow of the surrounding prose. I may be wrong about this; but if there is a hard-and-fast rule, I guess I just don't know what it is. The Manual of Style, for once, fails to enlighten! Do you have any further suggestions? -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the first and last of the examples above. The first one needed the comma to avoid ambiguity. The last one needed the comma to be consistent with our other "According to..." sentences, which all have commas. I'll look through and see if there are any others that need to be fixed. Kaldari (talk) 18:05, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I added some more commas for better consistency. I didn't change the 3rd example you give above, however, as I'm afraid it would degrade the flow of the sentence. Kaldari (talk) 18:16, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * In the lead, there are parentheses in parentheses. MOS doesn't explicitly say anything about that, but I'm not a fan. I'll be satisfied with its prose if you reduce it to one set of parentheses.
 * The MoS doesn't explicitly mention it, but it does (1) state that its rules apply to both rounded and square brackets, and it lists several examples that show square brackets within rounded parentheses. In this case, I'm not sure what the problem is; the acronym necessitates parentheses, and I can't think of a non-parenthetical grammatical construction that would be as good. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Good enough explanation for me. I'm not going to require that be changed. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Prose is pretty good, but there are a few halting sentences that could be improved. For example, "From the start, netball was viewed as an appropriate sport for women to play, with restricted movement that appealed to contemporary notions of women's participation in sports, while remaining distinct from potential rival male sports."
 * I agree, there is room for improvement in several places. I took a crack at cleaning up that sentence, but after looking at the one source that is available online, I don't (at the moment) see any way to improve the sentence further without straying too much from the meaning. I will also take another pass through the article in the next day or two and look for other awkward sentences/passages. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * "An all transgendered" requires a hyphen.
 * Fixed. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The "For children" section could use some prose tightening. One sentence paragraphs are generally inadvisable. In this case, the one sentence paragraph is unreferenced.
 * Agreed, I'll take another look at this section. I'm not entirely convinced the article needs quite so much detail about each variant. My inclination would be to simplify the entire section to one or two paragraphs and eliminate some of the details. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That would work. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I left the paragraph structure intact, but I believe I have addressed your concerns with this edit. One note, I did not add any citations to the first paragraph (which is now slightly expanded); but since it is an uncontroversial summary of the detailed info that follows (like the overall lead section), I hope that's OK. -Pete (talk) 02:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Redlinks do seem to conform to policy.
 * Great, thanks. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The "International competition" and "Major championships" sections seem to have overlapping information that could be presented in a better fashion. If you keep it as is, I won't fail this GA for it. Take that as more of a suggestion for an FA review.
 * Good observation, thanks. I'll take a closer look at this. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I nibbled around the edges in these sections, but I think your general point still applies. I don't see an easy fix, but I strongly agree that this could use some structural improvement. If there is a FA push for this article, this is something that really should be carefully considered. Thanks for the useful feedback. -Pete (talk) 02:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There are some reference issues that need to be addressed. The checklinks tool isn't giving me anything in the "Broken" column, but I can't open some of the "Indeterminate" column refs, specifically #'s 31, 86 and 106. #101 says "no record found". #'s 83 and 84 seem to redirect somewhere that doesn't provide the info it references.
 * Good catches. I think most of these could be resolved by simply removing the hyperlinks, as there are full citations provided that would permit verification. My results were slightly different from yours: 31 and 101 give me trouble too, but 86 and 106 seem to work fine. I will look more closely at 83 and 84. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I might've given you the wrong numbers. The source titles are "The History Of Netball In Sri Lanka", "Sports - Netball", "Tally by Country", "Queens leave for Liverpool on Sunday", "Indoor Netball at Planet Sports", "Netball moves towards professionalism", "Seychelles invited for netball tourney", and " The FIAT Netball Superleague". – Muboshgu (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There is something wrong with all those for me too. I added a lot of them and they were alright a few months ago. I will see if I can find some archived versions. Failing that we should still be able to use the newspaper sources as the web sites are generally considered to just be convenience links. AIR corn (talk) 23:18, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * "Sports - Netball" and "Tally be country" always seems to go to the default home page whatever I insert. Have left instructions using the quote paramater to access the information from this site. If anyone has a better way feel free to use it. Found archives for "Seychelles invited for netball tourney", "Queens leave for Liverpool on Sunday" and "Indoor Netball at Planet Sports". AIR corn (talk) 23:39, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed the links for "Netball moves towards professionalism" and "The FIAT Netball Superleague", so that should just leave the Sri Lankan one. Might have to search for a new source
 * Be sure this article conforms to the policy on gender-neutral language. "His/her" isn't the way to do it.
 * Good point. I see two occurrences. My inclination would be to simply replace them with "her." I think we may have discussed this before though, and somebody may have objected to that -- I don't remember for sure. -Pete (talk) 06:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe an IP editor changed it to "his/her" from "her" after my initial review. I'll look at the talk page for mention of this, but it should be gender-neutral unless it is specifically for a women's competition. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Replace one his/her with their and rewrote the other sentence so it wasn't needed. Unless it is talking about a specific gender version I feel this is the best approach. AIR corn (talk) 23:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * At the beginning of every quarter and after a goal has been scored, play starts with a player in the Centre position passing the ball from the centre of the court. Should "Centre" be capitilised. It works well in disambiguation it from "the centre of the court", but I am not convinced it is strictly correct. AIR corn (talk) 23:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree -- I'm pretty sure this should not be capitalized. -Pete (talk) 02:57, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

There haven't been any edits here or on the page since Thursday. What's the status? I see the Sri Lanka deadlink is still there. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I found two refs to replace one instance, but none to replace the Even though netball was played in Sri Lanka as early as 1926, an official governing body was not created there until 1972 sentence. I can remove it if no-one else comes up with anything. Is there anything else that needs to be done?
 * I added two citations for the "According to the IFNA" sentence in the lead per the discussion above. I wasn't able to find anything for the Sri Lanka sentence either. Guess we'll have to delete it. :( Kaldari (talk) 00:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If it can't be attributed, it'll have to be deleted. Is that all that's left outstanding? I'll take another look at the article by tomorrow. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi all -- sorry that I've been absent. Looks like you have things well in hand; I'm reviewing the discussion above to see what I can still do to pitch in. One small thing I noticed: Aircorn, with this edit, you seem to have broken a second edit that shared that ref name (ref #32). Could you take a look? I'm not sure the best way to resolve that one. -Pete (talk) 02:22, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed. That is the reference mentioned above that still can not be verified. Maybe you will have better luck. AIR corn (talk) 02:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, this is the best search string I could come up with, and I came up short; looks like that site is gone without a trace. Ah well :) -Pete (talk) 17:38, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Removed the Sri Lankan sentence. Sri Lanka is still mentioned at the start of the paragraph and Asia gets a mention with Singapore and Malaysia so it won't affect the world wide view too much. De-cappitilised centre as well. I think that should cover all the points. AIR corn (talk) 22:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Great. I have to leave for something so I won't be at a computer for the next few hours, but I'll reevaluate this GA tonight or tomorrow. – Muboshgu (talk) 22:22, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No problem. Thanks for taking this one on. As you probably relised (and can see by its article history) it has been the source of a surprising ammount of drama. AIR corn (talk) 22:38, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I am surprised at that drama. I read some of it to get a background. I'll check out the prose now, but there are (at least) two dead links in the article that need to be addressed: "New netball venture steps forward" and "Indoor Netball at Planet Sports". – Muboshgu (talk) 01:10, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Fortunately, both were archived by the Wayback Machine. I fixed both citations to remove the dead links. -Pete (talk) 02:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

You all have done a great job with this article. While there are still some questions that remain to be addressed for FA status, you've more than met the requirements for GA status. Congratulations, you pass. – Muboshgu (talk) 15:25, 15 December 2011 (UTC)