Wikipedia:Peer review/Contents of the United States diplomatic cables leak/archive1

Contents of the United States diplomatic cables leak
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've returned to this article after a break, and would like to try to bring it to GA status. Reviews from uninvolved editors would be very helpful. Thanks, The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 06:57, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: It's unlikely that the article can advance to GA any time soon because of its inherent instability as a developing news story. Deciding what to include, how much to say, and how to support it also appears to me to be especially daunting. WikiLeaks is a hot-button issue, and many of the individual leaks touch upon other hot-button issues; those issues tend to be complex rather than simple and may be difficult to describe succinctly and fairly. I, personally, would not attempt it. Here are a few other thoughts:


 * The first sentence of the lead says, "This is a list... ". Indeed, the article is very list-y. It is broken into many small sections, lists, and lists of links. It might be possible to re-create it as a list instead of an article, but that would not be easy. Perhaps if the article were mainly a set of lists without interpretation, it could be managed. A set of tables would likely look better and be more readable than the existing article.


 * Each of the claims in the article needs to be checked for accuracy and balance. Supporting a claim with a single reliable source may not be sufficient even if the source actually supports the claim; other reliable sources might refute the claim. As an example of the kind and degree of the sourcing problems, I would point to the short subsection called "Copenhagen Accord on climate change". It consists of two sentences.


 * The first sentence says, "Diplomatic cables show how the U.S. 'used spying, threats and promises of aid' to gain support for the Copenhagen Accord, under which commitments are made to reduce emissions". This sentence is sourced to an article in The Guardian, but neglects to mention that the commitments are not legally binding. Because of this omission, the sentence may be misleading. As The Guardian article makes clear, the accord's main purpose may be to shield emitters from expense rather than to reduce emissions. It will be quite difficult to summarize hot-topic claims like this one clearly and fairly.


 * The second sentence in this subsection says, "The emergent U.S. emissions pledge was the lowest by any leading nation." The cited source for this claim is "staff writer" for the USCAN Climate Action Network, an advocacy group. Even if this particular advocacy group is accepted as reliable per WP:RS, its material does not seem to support the claim that the "emergent U.S. emissions pledge was the lowest by any leading nation". What in the USCAN tables supports that claim?


 * The impression an otherwise uninformed reader might get from reading these two sentences combined is that the U.S. forcefully pressed for the accord in order to reduce emissions and that it led the way by making the best pledge of all. This impression would be naive; the reality is much more complicated.


 * Some of the citations, like citation 1, are incomplete or, like citation 18, are malformed.


 * The dab tool at the top of this review page finds one link, Craig Stapleton, that goes to a disambiguation page rather than its intended target.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR; that is where I found this one. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 03:00, 30 December 2010 (UTC)