Talk:Al-Talaba SC/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: BlackJack (talk · contribs) 12:45, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Starting review

I'm happy to commence this review. Please contact me if there is anything else about the article I should be aware of. Thanks very much. Jack | ^{talk page} 12:45, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I've made a start. The first thing I have to say is that the article has been mostly if not wholly written by editors who have English as a second language. As a result, I'm finding sentence structure that is a bit awkward and cases of the wrong word being used. This is not a criticism. Instead of listing all such points ad nauseum like some reviewers do, I'm copyediting the article to ensure that any imperfections in the use of English are ironed out. These are minor points only. Similarly, I'm dealing with all minor MOS issues like redlinks and overlinks. So far, I've reviewed the intro and the club history to 1980. Watch this space. Jack | ^{talk page} 14:47, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Questions

• The section Golden years (1980–1986) could do with some explanation about the cancellation of the 1984-85 season. Why did that happen? Jack | ^{talk page} 15:47, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

• It was abandoned due to public interest being non-existent after the performances of the Iraq national football team in the 1986 FIFA World Cup qualification (AFC) and winning the 1985 Arab Nations Cup and the 1985 Pan Arab Games as it was stated in RSSSF. Hashima20 (talk) 17:44, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for your help. I'll continue with the review tomorrow. Jack | ^{talk page} 20:09, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

• Any possibility of completing the captains list re the periods 1990–1995 and 2007–2008? Thanks. Jack | ^{talk page} 06:18, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

The already written captains were found out of very little amount of references and photos due to the lack of archiving in the Iraqi Premier League, so I doubt that I can find anymore of them. Hashima20 (talk) 06:53, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

• In the 1995 Asian Cup Winners' Cup, why did Kazma SC and Al-Riyadh SC both refuse to play against Al-Talaba? Jack | ^{talk page} 06:28, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

They refused to face them due to the political tensions between Iraq and Arabian Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War. Hashima20 (talk) 06:53, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

• I note that Al-Talaba is defined as a sports club rather than just as a football club. What other sports, if any, is it involved in?

They were involved in many sports in the past but currently, due to financial and stability issues they are not contributing in any sport other than football. Also, when they were involved in sports in the past, they didn't really make an impact on them. They usually competed in second flights. Hashima20 (talk) 06:53, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

• I haven't studied the support section in detail yet but I see several citations are attributed to Facebook and these are deprecated. I will have to challenge the content there and remove it unless reputable sources can be provided. Jack | ^{talk page} 06:40, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Al-Talaba don't have a stadium, as mentioned in the article, due to the construction of their new sports city, so the fan base of Al-Talaba decreased massively which led to them using Facebook as the only platform to express their cheering to Al-Talaba other than going to the currently used stadium of Al-Talaba, Al-Shaab Stadium. Most of the football teams from Baghdad have the same problem due to the lack of stadiums and stopped construction plans of new ones. Hashima20 (talk) 06:53, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

• All except two of Al-Talaba's matches in the 2003–04 season were postponed and the league was abandoned. Can you please provide some information about the abandonment, which was presumably because of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the impact that these events had on the club? Thanks. Jack | ^{talk page} 16:07, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

There aren't any evidence of how the invasion impacted the club but I assume that the over postponing that the club suffered was just a matter of coincidence. Hashima20 (talk) 18:07, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Conclusion

First of all, there is no reason to even consider the "immediate failure" option because the only problem I had with the article, having read it a couple of times, was that it did not meet B-class standard in respect of English usage and grammar. That is only to be expected when the main editors use English as a second language. I have therefore copyedited the article myself to raise the standard of English to comply with the B-class criteria. The article already met the other five criteria except that one section has had to be reduced because of an unreliable source being cited several times; this has had minimal impact on the article overall as the content I removed was unimportant.

These are my comments in respect of the six GA criteria:

1. 

   well written:

no problems with the prose, spelling or grammar; complies with MOS

1. 

   verifiable with no original research:

very good work done re citations; ideally it would be nice to have more from books which would be a consideration if ever taken to FAN

1. 

   broad in its coverage:

coverage is good and in summary form without unnecessary detail

1. 

   neutral:

no bias at all with noticeably fair treatment, and much credit, given to rival teams

1. 

   stable:

no problems

1. 

   illustrated, if possible, by images:

the images are relevant and have suitable captions

There is no doubt that this is a good article and great work has been done by Hashima20 and others. I will certainly support Al-Talaba in future if I am drawn into any discussions about Iraqi football . Well done. Jack | ^{talk page} 06:14, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your review, BlackJack. You are one of the best article reviewers I've met. If you're interested in Al-Talaba or Iraqi football generally, please consider reviewing the other article that I nominated to be a good article, Hussein Saeed. Hashima20 (talk) 17:16, 27 May 2016 (UTC)