Talk:Washington (state)/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Martinvl (talk · contribs) 06:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I have reviewed this article against the B-Class criteria. I have not reviewed the article in detail as I feel that that there are number of major issues that need to be addressed first.

1. The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary.
 * A check on the citations present using the tool here revealed that about 10% of the citations map onto dead links.
 * The section on history is rather short of citations as are the sections on Transport and Governance.
 * In addition, there do not appear to be any citations for national parks etc.

2. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies.
 * The coverage seems fair, though a few items mentioned in the lede are not covered in the body of the article. One such item is the lumber industry (there may be more).

3. The article has a defined structure.
 * Yes

4. The article is reasonably well-written
 * The article has too many lists, particularly the lists of national parks. It might be appropriate to create a new article National parks of the State of Washington and move the lists there.  How much of the state is devoted to national parks?  To military areas?  Are the most significant worth mentioning, but merge the rest into a general discussion.
 * Similarly, a new article Demographics of the State of Washington could be written and some of the lists pruned down.
 * Again, the list of cities is probably too large – maybe more about the metropolitan area of Seattle and less about every community within that area.
 * Likewise, the section on religion is too detailed – don’t be scared to lump small groups into “other”, but give the expanded list in the new article on demographics.

5. The article contains supporting materials where appropriate.
 * By and large Yes

6. The article presents its content in an appropriately understandable way
 * Yes

Summary – I think that the article is bordering a "B-class" level, but needs considerable work to bring it up to GA level. In particular, certain areas do not have sufficient citations while the lists could well be spun off into new articles and this article should concentrate on the highlights. Given the amount of work needed to overhaul the lists and to replace the dead links, I think it best to fail this article and to invite a resubmission once those areas have been addressed. Once resubmitted, the prose and other details can be examined in more depth.