Talk:Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: MJL (talk · contribs) 18:05, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

This has clearly been waiting far too long for a review. I'm trying to tackle the backlog for WP:GAN, so let's do it!

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria This is only my second GAN review, so please be patient with me. In the same vain, more sources on the prison gulags are probably needed. The last two paragraphs of the "Methodology and challenges" section are only cited with the primary source of the report. Additionally, because some portions of the article are so reference heavy (like have 5+ inline citations), it makes me feel awkward when statements in Wikipedia's voice like: The DPRK reacted by threatening to harm the UN staff affiliated with the new Seoul office. or Crimes included execution, enslavement, starvation, rape and forced abortion. only have single lone citation. That is to say nothing of the section labeled "Summary of report findings." Were no other sources available for this besides the report itself?
 * 1) Is it well written?
 * A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:
 * I certainly think this is a well-written and easily understood article.
 * B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:
 * Still reviewing this. *gasps* are those curly quotes I see? (Still not sure why that's a rule, but it is.)
 * 1) Is it verifiable with no original research?
 * A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:
 * Why are your little blue numbers out of order?
 * B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons&mdash;science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:
 * In the "North Korea's reactions," there are a few statements that talk about how "pressure on the DPRK mounted." I'm not seeing any source for that. I did see it being mentioned in Cumming-Bruce Sep 19 2014, though.
 * C. It contains no original research:
 * A lot of material is cited to the original report which... fine, but it becomes redundant after a while because it's an unneeded supplement to your otherwise good sources. I'd avoid citing the report directly when you already have a secondary source being cited describing what's in it.
 * D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:
 * Earwig was a nightmare to review.
 * 1) Is it broad in its coverage?
 * A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:
 * B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):
 * No issue.
 * 1) Is it neutral?
 * It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
 * Presents facts reasonably well, I can confidently say.
 * 1) Is it stable?
 * It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
 * 1) Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?
 * A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:
 * Very well done and thorough!!
 * B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
 * The image in the infobox needs a caption or alt-text
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * I'm not willing to outright pass or fail this, and I still need to get some of my own ducks in order. However, I will give you sufficient time to address these concerns in deference to your long wait. { &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 18:05, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Pass or Fail:
 * I'm not willing to outright pass or fail this, and I still need to get some of my own ducks in order. However, I will give you sufficient time to address these concerns in deference to your long wait. { &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 18:05, 12 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you again for putting so much effort into reviewing this article. I have begun to work on your review points. There is so far one point that I need some clarification on. I don’t understand point 2A). Could rephrase in a different way? Are you talking about the inline references? Thank you.Al83tito (talk) 14:19, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
 * [Thank you for the ping] Yeah, sorry that's exactly it. little blue numbers is a reference to WP:AFCSTANDARDS which uses that term. I specifically mean when you have a referenced statement like so:[5][1] I believe that is fine only in the circumstance that [5] must be the primary source for the statement, but if it isn't it should go [1][5] (As far as I know). Cheers! &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 14:28, 21 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi Thank you for your response. I keep working to make improvements based on your review points. I made a copy of the article to make the improvements on a draft page, and soon I will send to you my finished work. I have already addressed the curly quotes issue (1B), and the caption in the infobox (6B). My next step is to look into items 2B and 2C about references.


 * Since we started a conversation on the little blue numbers (now I understand what is meant by that) I thought I’d go ahead and continue to talk with you on this one now. There are two reasons that make me so far think that it is better to not reorder the numbers.


 * First, from a practical perspective the order of those numbers can change a lot over time. Numbering and ordering of the reference list at the bottom is done automatically, based on what inline citations appear first, second, etc. If the article has a source that is first cited in the middle of the article, and is preceded by 14 others cited sources, that citation will automatically be assigned the 15 little blue number. Now, without changing a comma on the content of the article. If that inline citation is also added to the very beginning of the article, then the whole numbering is redone: what used to be inline citation 15, now it is 1; what used to be 1, now is 2, etc. So where before you could have three inline citation togetger looking like this: [1][5][15], suddenly they are renumbered to [2][6][1]. The assignment of little blue numbers is very dynamic and the slightest change in inline citations causes a re-arrangement of the numbering for all citations in an article.


 * Second, from a normative perspective, for the live of me I could not find any rules in wikipedia that prescribe that particular approach. Further, the link you shared with me that mentions the little blue numbers emphasizes the high degree of freedom that editors have in the citation styles.


 * So I wonder what your thoughts are given the above notes. If you did find any official guidance from wikipedia on this please do let me know because I would be very eager to read all about it. Thank you.Al83tito (talk) 14:57, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I have no clue where that came from. did it once for an article I wrote, so I assumed it must be a thing.  &#8211;  MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 15:10, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
 * and the standard practice is that citations are listed in numerical order, though in my interpretation of the GA criteria this is not necessary for GA. However, I will note that when this isn't right on a GA nom of mine the reviewer almost always says it needs to be fixed. If a citation gets reused earlier in the article it can mean you have to reorder it later in the article. I find it easiest to do this in Visual Editor. Hope that helps. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:29, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you both and . I confess I am still puzzled about what is the right approach on this. There are articles with well over 100 citations that I think makes it a time sink to re-adjust citations every time the numbering is altered, and also it seems that there is no actual codified rule on the matter, at least as far as I can tell... I will do the following. I will keep working on the improvements as MJL outlined, including if need be, re-organizing the inline citations. At the same time, I think this is a topic worth clarifying (not just for me, but for all) and I will ask a question in the talk page of the Good article page. Thank you.Al83tito (talk) 17:03, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
 * [Thank you for the ping] Just let me know when you are finished with everything else besides the blue numbers bit, and I'll fix it for you using WP:VE as Barkeep described doing. { &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 17:07, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I just did a little rearranging myself. I haven't looked at the the sources but am surprised with the number of sentences that have 4 or more citations attached to them. My instinct would tell me that there's likely some WP:OVERCITE going on there. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:19, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello. Please see here below how I have addressed your review points. As noted earlier, instead of doing the edits "live" in the actual article, I have instead created a draft subpage under my user account, and have worked on the improvements there (Please note that the draft page has two images replaced temporarily by placeholders, because they are used in the original article under Fair Use, and they then cannot be used elsewhere). I thought I'd first submit it for your assessment, and then move it over to the actual article page.
 * 1B: About 45 curly quotation marks found, and replaced with straight quotation marks.
 * 2B: Additional references and inline citations added (about 12 more sources added overall; going from about 87 to 99), to better support:
 * pressure on the DPRK mounted.
 * prison gulags
 * The last two paragraphs of the "Methodology and challenges"
 * The DPRK reacted by...
 * Crimes included execution, enslavement,...
 * 6B: Caption added for image in infobox


 * 2A: Order of the little blue numbers within groups of inline citations.
 * We started deliberating about this above, and then I also asked a question in the talk page of the Good Article wiki art.. I think it is now confirmed that there is no norm to organize them. Moreover, there are two comments in the GA talk page that I would like to highlight as they germane to my citation approach:
 * Some prefer to order the citations based on the order of the facts they are supporting in the sentence (or other schemes)
 * I would caution against arbitrarily rearranging citations like this because their order can have meaning: for example, a citation for the last sentence in a paragraph will come before a citation covering the paragraph as a whole.
 * For those reasons I would like to submit for your consideration that the inline citations should generally not be required to be rearranged during a GA review.


 * 2C: You note that a lot of material is cited to the original report, especially within the section Summary of report findings. and you suggest "avoid citing the report directly when you already have a secondary source being cited describing what's in it. " So If I understand your point correctly, let me address it by saying that I believe that citing the report itself is welcomed by Wikipedia policies (No_original_research and Identifying and using primary sources). Especially I would like to highlight the following excerpts from the policies:
 * Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care
 * An article about a novel: The novel itself is an acceptable primary source for information about the plot, the names of the characters, the number of chapters, or other contents in the book: (...) It is not an acceptable source for claims about the book's style, themes, foreshadowing, symbolic meaning, values, importance, or other matters of critical analysis, interpretation, or evaluation
 * An article about the conquest of the hypothetical country above: The proclamation itself is an acceptable primary source for a simple description of the proclamation, (...)
 * Per the above, any article that is about a publication, the publication itself (in this case an article about United Nations report), as a primary source, can be used in creating a neutral summary. That primary sources are not allowed in Wikipedia is a misconception; they just need to be used with more care. Indeed, any analysis, context, as well as establishment of notability are entirely sourced through secondary sources.
 * So I would like to submit for your consideration that the article is fully compliant with sourcing and citing the appropriate sources in this regard.

Again, thank you very much for your review and continued engagement. Please let me know what you think of the way I have addressed the review points. If I forgot to address anything please let me know. And in general, I look forward to your response. Thank you very much.Al83tito (talk) 21:49, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
 * You have addressed all my concerns to great satisfaction and have gone above and beyond! There were two errors/issues with references, but I fixed those (King 2019 had save command error and there was hidden text "CHRISTINE CHUNG" within a large swath of whitespace at the end of the reference section). I am incredibly happy to say that as soon as this is moved into the mainspace, I can give the green symbol thing and close the review. &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 22:11, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Wonderful! Thank you!! I just moved it all to the mainspace. Al83tito (talk) 23:41, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay, it is my honor and pleasure to mark this article as a GA after my first successful GAN review (ie this one). I sincerely hope that you continue to write great content like this! Further, I would like to formally encourage you to continue your work on this article in the hopes you eventually nominate it for WP:FA status. Again, thank you so much for your hard work, and you have certainly earned this GA without a doubt in my mind. Happy editing!! &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 00:18, 26 August 2019 (UTC)