Talk:Cebu City Council/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: MJL (talk · contribs) 01:17, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

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Much of this article would have needed to be re-written if it was to meet WP:GA?.

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   There are a lot of run-on sentences and things are very wordy. For example, Notable ordinances passed by the council included City Ordinances No. 2339, which prohibited discrimination in the city on the basis of disability, age, health status, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity or religion; No. 2343, which phased out single-use plastic products in the city and No. 2326, giving the elderly and people with disabilities free parking in malls, hospitals and other establishments. That whole thing is just one sentence.

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

   See below

2. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:

   Two sections are completely unsourced (2004-2007 and 2001-2004). Other sections are cited to a source which does not completely support the statement being made. For example, this source from Scribd (which is unreliable) does not support the statement that those members all stayed in their positions for the next three years. Another one does not even include a list of members.

   C. It contains no original research:

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   There is a lot to want from this article's coverage. I personally want to know why one member of the LDP (Jerry Guardo) is caucusing with the majority bloc. What do the committees do and which are considered to be the most important? Who picks the Vice Mayor? How does the Mayor interact with the council? What kind of place is Cebu City (per Summary style)?

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   See below.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Illustrations

I question the logic of putting a massive panorama in the second section of the article. It's so huge and unwieldy; I mean it takes up more space in its section than the prose does. If you really want to use it there, then I would switch the formatting to this:

{{Panorama
|image   = File:Cebu City Council Recess.jpg
|height  = 200px
|alt     = A meeting of the Cebu City Council as a panorama
|caption = Councilors of the 14th Cebu City Sangguniang Panlungsod huddle during a five-minute recess of their special session.
}}

Besides that, it's an odd choice to go through all the trouble to with making that picture but not actually include a picture of what the outside of the building looks like (something people searching for Cebu City Hall would've appreciated). You also could've asked the councillors to take a group photo for the page to serve as the lead image, but I guess that's a bit extra.

Finally, I have no clue why you let the Past councils section go unillustrated. We have an image of one of the former presiding officers, so you wouldn't even need to look that hard for a picture.

Layout issues

Sadly, there is only a single City Council article on all of Wikipedia which has made it to at least GA-class. It might make for a good model at the very least.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but the article is rather poorly formatted. My top concern is MOS:PROSE which is why I had to fail this article rather than place it on hold per WP:GAFAIL#0c. I think there is something like 13 different lists in there? It's kind of absurd. The specific solution to this could be as follows:

• Refocus the "Committee chairs" section by collapsing the table. Then write a detailed overview of the committee system with specific notes at who holds what important chair (don't list it out; pick only the most important ones to talk about). Optionally, you can retitle the section by calling it something like just "Committees".
• Do practically the same thing for the "Officers" section except expand that a lot more to by making it a level 2 header rather than a level 3.
• Get rid of all the membership lists. You're going to want to spin that off into its own stand-alone page per WP:SPLITLIST, so no way should the "past councils" section stay in this article. In its place, you should write a second part of the history section to cover all events from with a {{see also}} hatnote leading to the SPLITLIST.
• Just remove the "Summary by party" set of tables since they add no very little information to the article compared to what can be found in the infobox.
• You should also add some other sections as well, but I went over that above in the "broad in its coverage" comment.

Note: that is just how I would fix the problem. I'm just leaving you with it to ensure you a good sense for where I am coming from and to give you a possible path forward. Best of luck improving this article in the future, and don't be too intimidated to renominate it after substantial improvements. When in doubt, ask for help.

Kindest Regards, –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 01:17, 2 January 2020 (UTC)