Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Great Barrier Reef/1

Great Barrier Reef

 * • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review
 * Result: Keep per improvements made and consensus below. Geometry guy 09:55, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I nominated this article as a GA in 2006. I do not know if it still adequately meets the GA criteria, especially the "broadness" criterion, which was questioned in its failed FAC. Please note when assessing that this article is regularly vandalised. --Malkinann (talk) 04:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Its not an obvious delist imo, and seems broad enough. I do think it would benefit from a thorough copyedit to rearrange and merge some of the short paragraphs, and some of the single sentence paragrphs do not have sources - i assume from the structure that they are not sourced from other citations. Basically, i would add citation tags to every paragrph without a cite at minimum. Weak delist, but i do think it can be brought up to GA if someone has the time and sources.YobMod 08:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Now Keep after the good work done on it.YobMod 16:54, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Neutral at this point. I wouldn't give this an automatic pass if it were at GAN today, but it's not that far from GA status. Here are a few thoughts:
 * There are a bunch of deadlinks. See here.
 * The lead is on the short side for an article of this length.
 * There shouldn't be external links in-line, as there are in the Ecology section. These terms really should just be wikilinked - I'm confused as to why they're not.
 * References should be formatted with titles, publishers and access dates at the very least. For example, 83 and 84 are just bare links and 43 is missing an access date.
 * Overall, it looks like a nice article. I'm not seeing the referencing issues that Yobmod mentioned above, but that issue may have been corrected over the past few days. And I'm not seeing the concerns with broadness that were addressed in the FAC. Part of that may be the differences between FA and GA criteria - GA requires broadness, while FA requires comprehensiveness. And you weren't kidding about the vandalism - have you considered acting for semi-protection of the article? It would make all the IP vandalism go away... Dana boomer (talk) 17:06, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * A lot of referencing has been done since it got listed here, hence it looking better now.YobMod 15:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Response: YobMod, I've had a go at reshuffling the geography/geology section to better tell the story of the origins. Does that read better?  Are there any other surprising facts that strike you as needing a citation? Dana, I've fixed the deadlinks and unbared the links that I added in response to YobMod's concerns.  That's a neat tool.  Which sections of the article do you think get short shrift in the lead, Dana?  The Great Barrier Reef is prominent on the Australian school syllabuses from at least when you're eleven right up until you leave school - so of course the article is a perfect place to broadcast whatever.  As such, I was highly impressed when someone said "adding external links to redlinked articles per WP:EL" - the links to the red bass and red-throat emperor.  I wasn't sure exactly how they met that guideline, but as it was evidently a good faith edit rather than "HI JESSIE", I was happy. Not sure what I should be doing with those links.  I don't think WP would go for permanent semi-protection for the article.  I don't even try to do much in the way of vandal fighting on the article - everyone else seems to beat me to it.  --Malkinann (talk) 21:20, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry it took me a few days to get back to you on this. The dead links look good. Human uses could be bulked up a bit in the lead, and it just feels short to me - it doesn't compare well in length to the article. Partly personal preference here, I think, so I won't fight over it. On the external links, IMO they directly contradict the section of WP:EL that says "Sites that are only indirectly related to the article's subject: the link should be directly related to the subject of the article." should be avoided. My suggestion would be to leave them as red links. Red links can be good, since they encourage other editors to create new articles and redirects on useful subjects. Again, IMO, this article would be a great candidate for semi-protection. If you would like, I can request the protection, if you don't feel comfortable doing it. If you're against it, I won't butt in of course, but I think it would be a good idea.
 * At this point, I am going to change my vote to Keep. To be FA, it probably needs expansion, copy editing and a peer review, but it should stay as a GA. Dana boomer (talk) 20:45, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I've put some stuff in the lead about human uses and have created the fish redlinks. I agree that the human uses of the reef is shorter, but I gather that the Bowens' book could be used to expand that section (to which I have no access). The article has been previously semi-protected, and this is relatively low-volume vandalism.  I gather that vandalism on this article really heats up around exam-time. --Malkinann (talk) 21:30, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. As per Dana boomer's comment. Extremepro (talk) 08:33, 1 April 2009 (UTC)