Talk:Sphinx Head/GA1

GA Review
This review is transcluded from Talk:Sphinx Head/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Sphinx Head has been reviewed.


 * Commencing: 16:28, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Completed: 18:35, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Status: Lead review complete. Second opinions solicited. Review concluded and closed
 * Nominator: Cornell1890
 * Reviewer: Gosgood
 * Based on: Revision 219102126 as edited by Esrever (Talk | contribs) at 12:03, 13 June 2008.
 * Criteria: Revision 215211439 as edited by Deckiller (Talk | contribs) at 01:25, 27 May 2008.
 * GAR Review:  Sphinx Head

Tidying up
As noted above, I find the prose generally clear; there are minor cases of wordiness that do not manifest themslelves until the article has been reread a few times. Here are the few that caught my eye:

Lead

 * 1) The Sphinx Head Society is the oldest senior honor society at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
 * 2) Extraneous. Article is about the Sphinx Society; how does locating the University geographically advance that subject?
 * 3) Sphinx Head recognizes Cornell senior men and women who, throughout their undergraduate years, have demonstrated respectable strength of character on top of a and dedication to leadership and service at Cornell University.
 * 4) 'senior society' implies 'undergraduate.'
 * 5) Extraneous: article setting known to be at Cornell.

Membership

 * 1) Each year, Sphinx Head usually taps fewer than forty members men and women of the senior class for membership, both men and women.
 * 2) Since the Society's founding, membership has been "reserved for the most respected" members of the senior class at Cornell.
 * 3) Extraneous. It is already established in the reader's mind that Cornell is the setting, not Harvard, Yale, or Dartmouth.
 * 4) Although membership in Sphinx Head is public, the proceedings of the Society remain concealed. ¶ Since...
 * 5) Paragraph break. The narrative has shifted focus from the secret nature of the Society's procedings to various activities of the membership.

Additional comments
In accordance with the open review format, I invite any and all members of the community to comment here. No bars, no restrictions. Especially welcome are comments that take issue with any review conclusion above, so long as they are well-reasoned. I appreciate discussion over Terse "votes" (support, oppose, neutral) that have no supporting text, other than agreement with other editors. However, having stated 'No bars, no restrictions' I suppose I really can't forbid that kind of commentary. Take care. Gosgood (talk) 11:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) (Discussion starter) Lovely day in the neighborhood, hey what? Gosgood (talk) 11:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Work to be done
Gosgood, first let me thank you for all your work and time reviewing this article. I have begun many of the revisions that you have suggested and will hopefully have them completed by this evening/tomorrow. Thanks again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cornell1890 (talk • contribs) 20:47, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi Cornell1890. First off, glad that you could stop by. Please accept my apologies for the long time it took for this article to get to the head of the queue. Good Article Nominations has a serious backlog; around 215 articles at the moment and we're still on an up-tick. I've never seen it this bad; I'm sorry you had to wait a month.
 * Under the provisional open review process, today (16 June 2008, 16:28 UTC: mid afternoon, North American east coast) is the earliest that I can declare 'game over' or 'extra innings.' Theoretically, extra innings should be the exception, not the rule. Nominators should deliver GA-ready articles to the nomination queue. That is, as a prerequisite, nominators should:
 * go through the exercise that I've done above and self-critique; they should be brutal with themselves
 * then take the articles to peer review for coverage analysis (section 2 and 3 issue), along with point of view adjustment (section 4)
 * with content locked down, they should then take the article to the League of Copyeditors to clean up prose (section 1 issues), and then finally
 * let the article hang out to dry for a couple or weeks or a month to see if other editors take wacks at the article. (section 5 issues). Also, it is easier to self-critique an article after a passage of time, so the nominator should do a final self critique against the criteria one last time.
 * As a practical matter, both the peer review and copy editing projects are even more backlogged than Good Article evaluation. There are about two thousand articles tagged for copy editing and often peer reviews do not get the participation they should. That leaves the self-critique which is hard to do on one's own work: everyone loves their own babies. So it not unusual for nominated articles to be somewhat off target when they are dropped onto the queue. Consequently Good Article reviewers tend to show a bit of leniency at this stage of the game and give nominators a chance to close the gap. The real goal, after all, is to help people produce better articles. The green trinket is just a trophy, which, I guess, often motivates people. So, under the open review process, I have the option to keep the game going extra innings.
 * I must confess, however, that I have to convince myself to do this. The section two issue (verification) is big: the Sphinx Head article does not have a big presence in independent media outside of Cornell. The Cornell sources do have their place in confirming the very fine detail of the notable alumni list, but the quick read of a few editors, not just myself, is that the notable alumni list has really sandbagged the article. Sorry. I know you've spent a lot of time on it, but don't throw it away. See the 3(b) recommendations. That brings me to the section three issue: outside of the notable alumni list, there is not a whole lot of content here. I hit the article cold. The label said "Sphinx Head"; but the article didn't inform me much about the Sphinx Head Society beyond the very basics. That's not good enough; Good Articles have to inform at high B or A levels — content substantially complete (B) or fully complete (A). In fact, I think we're dealing with a Start class article, a little less complete than Quill and Dagger, which has also been evaluated Start. Bottom line: we're talking about more than an evening of touch-up here. My feeling is that if you address the concerns I've raised above and which Cornell2010 has raised below, you will have a substantially different — but better — article, and you'll be maybe a month doing it.
 * But a 'substantially different article' means 'another review' and — I'm not doing it. I'm an old buzzard with a certain amount of critical hysteresis in my brain. I can never look at your article cold again. So, unlike many Good Article reviewers, I don't do second reviews. I look at an article cold, I form an impression and express my opinion. From that point on, as far as I'm concerned, I'm tainted. I know a lot of Good Article reviewers allow nominators to fix what's broken and then they'll pass, but I'm not from that school. In fact, personally, I don't like the practice; the reviewer lacks a critical separation of concerns after the first pass is done — but I digress.
 * As a practical matter, it's already June 16 and it's getting late in the day. I probably won't touch this review for another day or two anyway, so you have some time to play. But I caution you against optimism. I'd plan for another nomination cycle. Hold off on writing. Do some research and find reliable — meaning outside of Cornell — sources to back the research up. Also, if you are a member of the Sphinx Head Society, congratulations. You have an additional conflict of interest issue. Should that be the case, I'd suggest teaming up with another editor who's slightly antagonistic toward the Sphinx Head Society, and maybe senior honors societies in general. New information has a way of turning up when somewhat antagonistic editors team up. So long as the edit wars don't erupt.
 * Thank you again for your patience and take care. I'll probably close the review around the 18th or so. Gosgood (talk) 13:57, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Additional comments for consideration
I have the following issues with this article being selected as a "good article," based on the following criteria:


 * 2a. There remains a significant amount of information in this article that is not verifiable and does not appear in any other source. For example, much of the information in the "At Cornell" and "After Cornell" sections is not verifiable. Is there any source that says a Cornell President was a member of Sphinx Head? Where is there evidence of a Sphinx Head member winning a Pulitzer Prize? Some of the citations, like 17 and 18, simply link to footnotes that aren't cited. Many of the members in the list are not cited as well. Is there any source that connects Ed Marinaro to Sphinx Head for instance? Some members have citations to back up their accomplishments, but not their connection to Sphinx Head.
 * 2b. For reasons already given above by Gosgood.
 * 2c. As per above, there seems to be original research since many facts appear to be unverifiable or unsourced.
 * 3a. There is little to this article besides a list of members and what they have accomplished. But what about the society? Is there any source that describes an accomplishment or activity?
 * 3b. As noted by Gosgood, the list is too long and full of members that hardly seem notable.
 * 4. I question the article's neutrality simply because of its omissions. There is no mention that Sphinx Head was forcibly removed from campus by its alumni. There is no mention of the lengthy fight over accepting women, which did not conclude until 2002. There is no mention of the Sphinx Head tomb (besides the misleading picture), and the fact that it hasn't been owned by the society in half a century. There is no mention of the society being 100% athletes in the late 1900s before being re-founded.
 * 6b. The image of the tomb is not relevant to the article unless there is some mention of the tomb within the article.

While I think the article and its contents are certainly interesting, I do not think it can be ranked among Wikipedia's best as a "good article." By its very nature, it seems unlikely that any "secret society" could have a sufficiently neutral, cited, and factual article to be considered a "good article." Cornell2010 (talk) 22:25, 15 June 2008 (UTC)