Talk:Turnhalle (Windhoek)/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 02:47, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take this review. Initial comments to follow in the next 1-3 days. Thanks in advance for your work on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 02:47, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Initial comments
Overall this looks like it's off to a good start. It's brief, but there's obviously not much out there on the topic. After looking at some of the sources, I think I might advocate making it even shorter. Most notably, I'm not sure the Mike Campbell saga belongs in this article when it's not clear any of it ever took place in the building or had anything to do with it. (I just watched the doc about him a few months back; I wish I could remember).

But let me know your thoughts on my initial take below. Note that I also made a few tweaks as I went; feel free to revert anything with which you disagree. -- Khazar2 (talk) 03:21, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions for improvement. I would appreciate further input, particularly for the last point. --Pgallert (talk) 07:14, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
 * "The Turnhalle (English: gymnasium) is a historic building" -- I'd suggest cutting "historic building" to "building" as the former has implications of being officially protected. The building's contribution to history is clear in the next sentence anyway.
 * ✅. I'm pretty sure the Turnhalle is on the National Heritage Register but I didn't find a source for that.
 * "a controversial attempt to quell armed resistance " -- is the word controversial needed here? It seems that an attempt to suppress an insurrection by definition is going to be controversial, and the word raises POV complications.
 * ✅, see below.
 * "the equally controversial" -- again, I'd suggest cutting "controversial" and just say what it is; the controversy can appear in the text below. "Equally controversial" is particularly fraught, giving the difficulty in assessing a "level" of controversy. This strikes me as especially problematic in that no sources appear to discuss controversy and the building together.
 * ✅, I see your point, particularly on the phrase "equally controversial", and have removed the two occurrences. Originally I wanted to convey that it was not just any conference that took place here but one that shaped more than a decade of Namibia's history, and not just any Tribunal but a very important one.
 * "SADC Tribunal " -- write out acronym for first usage.
 * Klausdierks.com seems unlikely to be a reliable source, but it's not relied on for anything controversial. Still, since the date for #1 is also given in source #2, you can probably just delete it.
 * Most of Klaus Dierks' works are available as books. I can make a turn at the library and look up ISBN and pagination, the text is identical to the content of the web site. I would opt not to delete this important source. (Ref#8 is important, not #1 for the foundation of Windhoek)
 * That doesn't seem like it should be a problem, then, especially for a noncontroversial claim. The site looked sketchy at first glance, but if he's a recognized author in the field that should be fine. -- Khazar2 (talk) 11:18, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
 * "The first Turners club " -- can you add a phrase of context explaining what this is for the non-expert? Alternatively, you could add an explanatory footnote.
 * " it was then destined" -- destined is oddly fateful language to use here. Do you mean that someone designated it for this purpose, or that this was the building's eventual fate?
 * ✅. Wanted to express that it was designated to be used that way, but burned down before.
 * "it convened a controversial conference " -- again I'm not sure it's necessary to tag this as "controversial" when the following lines make the dispute clear.
 * ✅, Removed.
 * "Also other, smaller parties carry Turnhalle in its name in reference to the Turnhalle Conference" -- what is the "its" here?
 * ✅, Should have been "their", I changed this.
 * "21 years after Namibian independence, the DTA is still represented in the Parliament of Namibia" -- this discussion seems to have taken us a bit afield of the history of the building; I'd suggest cutting at least this line as WP:SYNTH/WP:OR, since the parliament website doesn't appear to mention the gym.
 * ✅. Hmm, the Parliament website exactly supports the claim that DTA is in Parliament. But you are probably right that this is rather unimportant for the building itself. I moved the phrase to Turnhalle Constitutional Conference.
 * " It has been restored since then;[2] the SADC Tribunal became operational in April of the same year.[3]" -- can it be clarified when the building was restored? This sentence seems a bit misleading in its order, if the repair didn't start till November of the same year.
 * "The SADC Tribunal," -- why is this italicized on its first use?
 * ✅, removed.
 * "In one of its first cases, Mike Campbell (Pvt) Ltd and Others v Republic of Zimbabwe[13] the Tribunal ruled in 2007 and 2008 that the government of Zimbabwe could not evict farmer Mike Campbell from his land," -- but this didn't happen in the building itself, right, since they didn't even start to rebuild until Nov 2007? I'm not sure any of the information in this paragraph belongs in the article unless sources connect this information to the building; it's not clear to me that any of this even happened there. I would suggest that almost all sources that don't mention Turnhalle directly come out of the article (though the conference named for it is obviously fair game).
 * Well, the Campbell case is the direct reason for the situation that the Tribunal is not operational, that's why I thought it belongs here. Any suggestion how else to logically connect the statements On 18 November 2005 the Tribunal was inaugurated and The Tribunal currently has only four of ten judges appointed and does not accept nor hear any cases?
 * Ah, I see your point. On first reading, I didn't understand how directly connected those events were. Re-reading, I think this is more my fault than the fault of your text, but I'd still suggest making it a bit more clear that the SADC was accused of suspending the court as a direct result of these cases (perhaps it was the two-year gap that confused me?). I also wish we could clarify whether any Tribunal cases have ever been heard in the Turnhalle, but I understand this may not be possible from the sources. In any case, thanks for your thoughtful responses; glad to discuss any of this further if I can be of help. -- Khazar2 (talk) 11:11, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, the Campbell case is the direct reason for the situation that the Tribunal is not operational, that's why I thought it belongs here. Any suggestion how else to logically connect the statements On 18 November 2005 the Tribunal was inaugurated and The Tribunal currently has only four of ten judges appointed and does not accept nor hear any cases?
 * Ah, I see your point. On first reading, I didn't understand how directly connected those events were. Re-reading, I think this is more my fault than the fault of your text, but I'd still suggest making it a bit more clear that the SADC was accused of suspending the court as a direct result of these cases (perhaps it was the two-year gap that confused me?). I also wish we could clarify whether any Tribunal cases have ever been heard in the Turnhalle, but I understand this may not be possible from the sources. In any case, thanks for your thoughtful responses; glad to discuss any of this further if I can be of help. -- Khazar2 (talk) 11:11, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Some paraphrasing notes/final review
Looking again at the news article that forms the main source, I'm concerned with the closeness of some of the paraphrasing. The "destined" phrase that I noted above, for example, is taken almost word-for-word from the source: " it was then destined to serve as the venue for the SADC Tribunal court" compared to " it was destined to serve as a venue for the SADC Tribunal." Also: " was regarded as the most beautiful building in the northern part of town" vs. " newspapers regarded the Turnhalle as the most beautiful building of the northern part of town."


 * That was sloppy work of mine, in both cases. I reworded one phrase and put the other one in direct quotes.

While other sentences are much more heavily reworded, and some information is omitted, the big problem is just that there's no other sources but this one to interweave the information with, and so a large chunk of the Wikipedia article becomes a superficially altered version of one author's work. So I don't mean to suggest anything sinister happened here; it's easy to see how this would have happened, given the death of sources. Still, my reluctant take is that this article needs to reduce its reliance on the Republikien source, either by interweaving material from other sources if possible, or by simply cutting information if not. (Further suggestions that might help can be found at WP:PARAPHRASE).

Though I'm not listing the article at this time, I greatly appreciate your work on it and hope some of these comments will be useful in future revisions. It was a treat to get to review a Namibian geography article instead of the usual Sussex train stations! -- Khazar2 (talk) 03:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot for your review. An instant-fail was obviously not what I desired but I can see your point. I will see if I can dig out some other source. --Pgallert (talk) 07:32, 2 May 2013 (UTC)