Talk:2021–2022 Serbian environmental protests/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 18:40, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:40, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Images are appropriately tagged. Sources seem reliable as far as I can tell, but I can only spotcheck a few as they are mostly in Serbian.

The article needs a thorough copyedit. GA doesn't require high-quality prose, just clarity and grammatical correctness, but here the prose, in places, is bad enough that the meaning is unclear. I suspect a non-English-speaking primary author, since some of the problems are over the use of indefinite/definite articles, and others are related to the use of tenses. Some examples from the lead -- this is not an exhaustive list, even just for the lead:

• "over the adoption of the modified expropriation law, the law on the referendum and people's initiative, and Rio Tinto's planned lithium mine investment": all three of these are mentioned as if we know what they are, with no explanation.
• "Rio Tinto was previously given permission in 2004 to explore the mines near the Jadar Valley, although in 2017 the government of Serbia signed an agreement to implement the "Project Jadar", which would give Rio Tinto permission to exploit the jadarite mineral." Previous to what? We've had no reference time set yet. And why "although"? There's no contrast being made.
• "The protests from September to February were mainly organized by environmental organizations, of which the "Ecological Uprising" and "Kreni-Promeni" had received the most attention." Strange use of "had"; do we mean they were already known before the protests?
• "and soon after, they garnered greater attention which led to a series of roadblock protests in November and December 2021": the attention led to the roadblocks?
• "Protests have continued through 2022, with tens of thousands of people participating in them, including the Serbian diaspora. They ended after the protests on 15 February." I think this means the last protest was on 15 February, but if so it's badly phrased, since it is more naturally parsed as "the protests ended after the protests", with the date correcting the misparsing. And in any case if so "continued through 2022" is wrong.

Looking further down the article, there are tense errors in almost every paragraph. Some more oddities, just from one short section, as an example:

• "and a non-existing citizens' association "Lila revolucija" (lit. 'Lila revolution') called for people to": I don't what is meant, but it can't be "non-existing".
• "Serbian diaspora had also held protests" -- presumably should refer to members of the diaspora.
• "Leading organizations called for protests to continue until the demands were met": "Leading organizations" is vague and not NPOV.

I suspect there's too much detail in the article. We get statement after statement from all parties, every section. Surely this could be summarized a bit? The reader doesn't need the blow-by-blow account of the daily events -- there must be thousands of words of statements and commentary available for every few days of the protests. Our job is to assemble that data into a coherent article. I'm also concerned about NPOV -- I have less ability to judge this, because I can't check the sources and I'm unfamiliar with the events themselves, but I see occasional instances of non-neutral language, such as the "Leading organizations" referred to above.

I'm going to fail this; there's too much to do here to manage at GAN. I would recommend reviewing for NPOV and seeing what can be summarized, and then working with a good copyeditor to clarify the language, before bringing it back here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:17, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll address these issues and re-nominate it once I finish. Vacant0 (talk) 22:18, 19 August 2022 (UTC)