Talk:Premiership of Gordon Brown/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: HJ Mitchell  |  Penny for your thoughts?   02:44, 2 April 2010 (UTC) This'll be something a bit different so I'll take it on, but it's half three in the morning, so I won't be doing much reviewing til a more sensible hour. The image is fine, 135 references and not a single dead link- very impressive. Equally impressive, it doesn't link to a single disambiguation page. Some of the references will need proper formatting, though- I spotted at least 2 bare URLs and several lack proper "work" fields, some have publishers, some don't, some works are linked, some aren't. There will need to be consistency there, but that's relatively easy to fix (if slightly tedious). As for the content, that will have to wait a few hours! HJ Mitchell |  Penny for your thoughts?   02:44, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've managed to update some of the references (a lot of the ones that already had parameters) by copying the article into Word and running the find/replace feature. I'll have to do the others manually though, which will take a bit longer. I'll try to get it done over the weekend. Also some of the earlier prose needs to be updated because it's written in the present rather than the pst tense, so I'll give that a go too. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 12:30, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Done some more refs, but have to nip out for a while now so will carry on later. TheRetroGuy (talk) 12:08, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The Guardian article "Brown announces £14m in flood aid" was a deadlink so I removed the link a few weeks ago but kept it as a ref and found other online supporting refs. TheRetroGuy (talk) 12:08, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * All refs now complete. I noticed some unreferenced information as I was going through this so I'll take a look at that in the next few days. TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Apologies for not getting back to this sooner. I had panned to do it yesterday but have been off line for a couple of days due to technical problems. I hope to take a good look at this tomorrow and over the weekend. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 16:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Have updated the tense for some of the earlier prose and expanded the lede (although that may now be too long). I'll look for more refs for some of the unsourced stuff over the weekend. TheRetroGuy (talk) 22:23, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm planning to trim this a little bit in the next day or so, removing one or two less important sections to make the article a bit more consise. Sections which could go are "Youtube Video", "Smeargate" and "Letters Controversy". Possibly also "Gurkha Settlement Rights". Certainly Smeargate and the Gurkhas issue are covered elsewhere while the Letters and Youtube incidents are relatively small issues. TheRetroGuy (talk) 21:02, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Also "2009 Labour Party Conference", the events of which are also covered in other articles. TheRetroGuy (talk) 21:13, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Apologies for not returning sooner, between RL, my own GAN and a few other things, I've been rather busy lately. I've taken a good look at the content (good work on those references, btw- it's tedious work, but it's unfortunately essential for verifiability) and the information all appears well sourced without digressing off-topic. However, I worry about the weight being given to some of the controversies. You raise the issue yourself above- for example, the Gurkhas, the YouTube video, "smeargate", the MPs' expenses row etc etc- do these all merit their won section??? I would suggest perhaps a "controversies" section into which all these sections can be merged.
 * I also have some concerns about the ordering of the article. If it were me, I'd have a very clear divide between policy, government and party politics- to illustrate my point, the sections jump from the EU (which would probably be better merged into "foreign policy") to 42-day detention to the attempted leadership coup or, further up, we jump from foreign policy to "the non-election" to the military covenant.
 * Further, I know the press like to berate him constantly, but there seems to be very little positive material about him in here compared with the (probably disproportionate) amount of criticism
 * My final concern is one that can't be addressed by editing- I'm concerned that, with the election so close and the announcement of it so recent, that the article may become unstable, by which I mean that large amounts of information may be added or removed on a daily basis rather than implying that people will be prone to edit warring. We'll just have to see how that one goes, if it ceases to be stable enough to review properly or to list, it can always be renominated after the election but I'll keep an eye on it.

Any questions or clarifications you need, just drop me a note and I'll get back to you as a priority. HJ Mitchell &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   01:04, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the feedback. I'll be working on this again for the next couple of hours or so, so I'll try to address some of the points you've raised. I agree with you that this article is disproportionately unfavourable to Brown so I'll see if I can belance the article up a bit. Sadly there seems to be little positive stuff reported about him, so perhaps if I knock some of the more unnecessary stuff out it might even things up a bit. I think I'll remove the sectins I mentioned above for now and try to summarise them or give them a brief mention in an appropriate section. For example, the 2009 Party Conference section exists purely to mention Labour's loss of support from The Sun, so that could fit into one of the election-related sections, probably 2010. I'll give it a go and see how it works, and post the deleted sections to the talk page so they can be easily accessed. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 11:59, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Something I forgot to mention above was my concern about the length of this article. It was 88KB long and getting difficult to edit. I've removed some of the sections and trimmed it down to a slimmer 74KB. I'll try to add some things back, but more concisely.
 * I agree that the information should be re-ordered into subject area. At the moment it's more or less laid out chronologically, but that doesn't always follow smoothly. I also notice an Iraq inquiry is mentioned earlier so the Chilcot information could be merged with that.

I've knocked out some of the less important information and attempted to re-organise the article along the lines suggested above. We now have Foreign policy, Financial policy and Leadership section where I've included a few relevant subjects which were previously stand alone sections. Military Covenant now comes after Foreign Policy and is followed by 42-Day Detention. Not sure whether there's a better place to include this information. With some of the more newsy stuff gone I think it's starting to look a little bit more balanced, although we could do with one or two more positive aspects of Brown's premiership. Sadly though the media doesn't seem to report much positive stuff about him. Shame really as I do think he performs well when the UK is in crisis - the recent airspace closures being an example (although the government is now attracting criticism over this for being over-cautious). Hopefully this is starting to look in better shape now, butI'll come back to it in a day or two and read through it again. Cheers and thanks again for the feedback. TheRetroGuy (talk) 14:06, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * One thing I need to add more information on is the "Government of all the talents" which is mentioned in the introduction, but not later on. TheRetroGuy (talk) 14:11, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * That's looking a lot better now. The ordering seems more logical and it;s definitely easier t navigate now it's been trimmed a little. Keep up the good work. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   14:45, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, having watched this fairly closely over the last few days, I'm happy that my concerns have been addressed sufficiently to pass this- and before the election as well! :) You'll have to keep a close eye on it over the next two or three weeks and obviously there'll be more to add as the election campaign progresses, but I think it's stable enough to pass. Congratulations! HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   13:09, 29 April 2010 (UTC)