Talk:Background of the Spanish Civil War/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Jezhotwells (talk) 22:26, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I shall be reviewing this article against the Good Article criteria, following its nomination for Good Article status.

Disambiguations: two found and fixed.[1] Jezhotwells (talk) 22:28, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Linkrot: one found and fixed.[2] Jezhotwells (talk) 22:44, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Substantive review should be posted within 48 hours. Jezhotwells (talk) 22:47, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Checking against GA criteria

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   Significant opposition to liberal governments was also made by the Catholic church, with the government bringing in anticlerical legislation. This makes little sense - suggest something like "The Catholic church opposed liberal governments which had introduced anticlerical legislation."

   Until the 1950s, capitalism in Spain was primary based on agriculture. - "primarily"

   Their power was challenged by the industrial and merchant sector, but this was largely unsuccessful. Whilst not feudal in nature, the Spanish situation was significantly different from either France or the United Kingdom. Confusing and badly written.

   Between 1868 and 1874, popular uprising led to the overthrowing of Isabella II, by two distinct forces: a liberal movement within the middle classes and the military (led by General Prim), concerned with the ultra-conservatism of the monarchy, and a series of urban riots. In 1873, her replacement, King Amadeo I, abdicated due to increasing political pressure and the First Spanish Republic was proclaimed. The prose throughout is very poor - the article needs a thorough copy-edit for spelling, grammar and an even prose style.

   A copy edit has now been completed and the article is now easier to read and understand. Please let us know if there are any areas that need more work. --Diannaa (talk) 19:27, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

   Looks good now. Jezhotwells (talk) 15:45, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

   The lead does not fully summarise the article, please read and apply WP:LEAD.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   References check out, I assume good faith for those which I have not been able to check.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   OVerall the article is not well written, the prose throughout fails to flow, there are elementary errors of grammar. It should not have been nominated without a thorough copy-edit. On hold for seven days for this to be addressed. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:13, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

   OK, thanks for your hard work. I am now happy to list this. Jezhotwells (talk) 15:45, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the review, I'll crack straight on with getting the prose/lead fixed, I figured it was "OK" but I accept the complaints. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I've gone through both a copyedit and an extensive rewrite of the lead. Could I have an update as to whether you want me to go further and instruct the guild? Also whether the now longer lead is OK? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 18:23, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

The lead is better now, but we still have issues of poor prose and grammar:

• By the end of the nineteenth century, the land-based oligarchy remained powerful in a system dominated by large pieces of land called latifundia, unsuccessfully challenged by the industrial and merchant sector. confusing and unclear
• Popular uprising led to the overthrowing of Isabella II in 1868. - "uprisings"
• In 1873, her replacement, King Amadeo I, abdicated due to increasing political pressure and the short-lived First Spanish Republic was proclaimed; the restoration of the Bourbons occurred in December 1874. Too much information, poorly presented.
• The press denounced government actions barbaric, unjust and corrupt. missing verb

These are just some examples, the prose flow and structure is very poor throughout. It needs a professional copy-edit. I think that you had better get someone with good language skills to go through the whole artcile and render it into good plain English. This should have been done before nomination. WP:GAN is not the place to start work on articles, it is somewhere to check that they actually meet the criteria. Remains on hold until 21 June. Jezhotwells (talk) 12:30, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Those are cases of concision for the lead's sake, since it is already rather long; I'll elaborate so at least the ideas are more imply presented. I'm a native speaker, it's just the level of simplicity I find difficult. This isn't to justify the state of the article at the moment, but merely the suggestion it needed editing before nomination. I'll put it up at the guild. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:31, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

• As a title, I prefer "Background to the Spanish Civil War". Google and Wikipedia searches suggest that this may not be a majority opinion, but I thought I'd mention it anyway in case anyone agrees...! 86.181.169.110 (talk) 13:19, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

See this short discussion where the lack of a consensus is clear. Seems little point in changing it unless there's project wide agreement. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:26, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, fair enough... thanks, I wasn't aware of that discussion. 86.181.169.110 (talk) 13:28, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

• A couple of comments on the lead section:
  • "large pieces of land called latifundia" would read better as "large estates called latifundia", if estates is what they were. (I am not making this change myself just in case "estates" is not the appropriate word.)
  • In "Their power was unsuccessfully challenged by the industrial and merchant sectors" there is a slight difficulty in that "their" appears to refer to the pieces of land. I suggest a noun should be substituted (e.g. "The land-owners' power...") but I am not sure which noun would be best.
  • The lead seems to offer an ultra-quick summary of Spanish history from the end of the 19th century, but, when reading the earlier history, one is tempted to ask what exactly this has to do with the Civil War. I think this uncertainty could be alleviated if, right at the start, there was a scene-setting sentence saying something like "the roots of the Spanish Civil War lay in <some cicumstance of the late 19th century>", or "the Spanish Civil War was the culmination of x years of unrest that began in the 19th century with...", or some such similar thing to explain why this material is relevant and is being mentioned. I just made up those sentences off the top of my head, but hopefully you get the general idea. 86.181.169.110 (talk) 13:49, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
  • It would be nice to round off the lead section with an explicit mention of the Spanish Civil War starting. At the moment, the reader is kind of left in limbo at "Several generals decided that the government had to be replaced if the dissolution of Spain was to be prevented, organising the military coup of July." So, was that the start of the Civil War?

86.181.169.110 (talk) 13:49, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Acted on most of that. Wide statements about the contribution of the 19th century would seem rather vague and disputable. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:24, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Sure, I didn't mean to suggest that you copy my sentences. My point is that as we read "By the end of the nineteenth century, etc. etc." it would be good to have some idea of why this is relevant to the Civil War. I mean, why not start in 1700? Or 1500? If there is no non-vague / non-disputable way to explain the relevance, then there is perhaps no good reason to include the material. 86.176.215.170 (talk) 17:18, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I took them up because I agreed they were a good idea. I hope the reader can fit them together as a background without the article having to justify the inclusion of each and every thing in the context of 1936 onwards events. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 17:49, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Having read the whole article, my uncertainty about this is somewhat amplified. I expected an article titled "Background of the Spanish Civil War" to be fairly tightly focused on explaining events that led to to the outbreak of Civil War. However, much of the earlier information has no stated connection with the Civil War, and it seems to me that it might as well have been taken from an article titled "History of Spain". I think "History of Spain" is already covered in other articles, so I don't see any point in repeating it here unless it is clear how the events described were specifically relevant to the build-up to the Civil War, which currently is often not the case. Perhaps I am misunderstanding something. 86.176.215.170 (talk) 21:44, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

All the information is taken from books covering the Civil War, and is summarised in the same way any other article would be. The four books I have all cover the same ground and this is reflected in the article. It's not too long, in which case there could be a mandate for splitting things off. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:01, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

How are we doing? Is the copy-edit done? --Jezhotwells (talk) 23:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Diannaa does appear to have copyedited down to the end (my thanks Diannaa for that). I've clarified the points Diannaa made during that copyedit. Best for you to take another look, I think. Looking again at this approximate summary of edits since the article was placed on hold, it is reasonably comprehensive. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 07:15, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, I will take a look tomorrow evening (24 June) as I have other commitments until then. Jezhotwells (talk) 07:50, 23 June 2011 (UTC)