Talk:San Diego County Probation Department

Article Problems
It goes without saying that there are serious problems with this article. Essentially it's a copy of the San Diego County Probation Department 2006-2007 Annual Report but most of the sentences have been rephrased such that it's no longer a direct lift of that material. The structure/content is, however, essentially identical. Although it certainly would be considered plagiarism if submitted as a university essay, the standards are a little lower here, although whether they are this low remains debatable. I note that it's almost entirely reliant on a primary source, and therefore clearly fails WP:reliable source, but whether this is a sufficient to do anything other than just tag it I'm open to suggestions about. For the moment I'm simply going to reinstate the tags removed by the article creator a month ago. Debate  木  15:42, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Also note the COI by SPU User:Sdprobation (contributions). Debate   木  15:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Up Dated Article
This article has been greatly expanded, updated, and edited for content. Multiple sources have been used and they fall under Wikipedia’s guide lines in all aspects as they are public domain articles and source materials from neutral sources.

Conflict of Interest has been corrected as this article is of NEUTRAL content as well as the main contributor has no ties with the organization in question.

Previous section dealing with the History has been briefly edited, yet substantial work need to be completed to bring it up to Wiki standards. --MKP2106 (talk) 02:35, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I have had a go at getting the article in some kind of basic shape, or at least, to provide some direction on further improvement. While the article clearly continues to have COI issues, it's less of a problem with articles such as this than, say, biographical articles so I'm going to ignore that particular problem for the moment. Some of the other problems, however, remain. In particular, many if not all the sources used do not comply with Wikipedia's policies because they are predominantly primary sources, or unreliable sources such as "OCEA Summary of Peace Officer Right to Carry" which appears to be a press release of some kind from a self publishing website and the authorship is unclear. Also, one source does not appear to be working (http://www.appanet.org/resources/surveys/National_Firearms/docs/APPA_Firearms_Survey_2nd_Ed.pdf). As some of the material is not controversial the primary source problem isn't as huge an issue as it would be with something like a biography, but it does still risk leaving the article reading like an advertisement, suffering from undue weight problems and a lack of critical objectivity and analysis (such as complaints about the department, controversies, etc.). It is irrelevant whether the source articles are in the public domain as this is not one of wikipedia's policies. In fact, very few reference texts used on Wikipedia are in the public domain. Finally, the tone of the article still reads as if the material has been stripped straight off the department website with minimal editing. Please note that all above comments are intended to provide direction on how to bring this article in line with Wikipedia's standards. If I did not think the article was worthy and had potential I would not be wasting my time trying to improve it. Debate   木  05:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)