Talk:Peter Hitchens/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: -- Cirt (talk) 19:45, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I will review this article. -- Cirt (talk) 19:45, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Cirt is an experienced reviewer and excellent Wikipedian, so I won't prejudge his review, but additional comments are welcomed, so here's mine.

The article has deep problems with sourcing and style - so much so that it would damage Wikipedia to pass it in its present form. A root-and-branch review is needed even to get it up to B standard.

The article's subject is a columnist and author, so there are many, many published sources by him, which are mainly expressions of his opinions. The article is drawn overwhelmingly from such sources. An encyclopedia article needs to be written overwhelmingly from third-party sources: otherwise all someone has to do to get a glowing WP article is persuade a publisher to publish their autobiography. The "Core beliefs" section is particularly overlong- if third-party coverage is so thin on the ground, why are Hitchens' opinions considered notable? He's not a scientist, so why are his opinions on scientific issues considered notable? Ref #41, which seems to use a Popper cite to back up a statement about Hitchens, seems to be Original Research and unacceptable.

The second paragraph of the lede is a favourable quote from someone in the same profession (and same city). Why is Lucas' opinion of paramount importance for understanding who Hitchens is? This is exactly not what the lede is for. The article should be a summary of factual information about the subject, and the lede should be a summary of that article. Although WP:PEACOCK doesn't apply to quotes, the effect is that peacock terms appear in the lede. The first paragraph of the lede, by the way, is excellent.

There are entire paragraphs without a reference, where the sourcing is not clear. This is unacceptable.

Third-party sources, and dozens of them, need to be found to justify a 6000-word article on this person. Otherwise, the article could be radically cut down to an excellent encyclopedic treatment of the subject, but much, much smaller. I think it could be very useful for people interested in Peter Hitchens, for whatever reason, to have a page on a wiki tracking his opinions on different topics, but Wikipedia is not that wiki. MartinPoulter (talk) 10:48, 9 January 2011 (UTC) tweaked MartinPoulter (talk) 17:27, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

PS Something adding to the sense that this is an article in disrepair is that the Harvard links are broken. Click on "Hitchens 2009" in the footnotes and nothing happens. MartinPoulter (talk) 11:51, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Martin's review of the article, and as a result am going to quick-fail this as it currently stands. Wizardman Operation Big Bear 16:54, 11 January 2011 (UTC)