Talk:Citizendium/GA1

GA Reassessment

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This article has several problems that make it fail the GA criteria.

Section: Fork of Wikipedia

Lots of speculation about events that were discussed, but never happened and almost certainly won't. The sentence "No announcement has yet been made on Citizendium editions in languages other than English, but Sanger has stated in his essays that they may be forthcoming after the English-language version is established and successfully working." is at best horrifically outdated, at worst outright misleading.

Secondly, there's some bits that come out of nowhere. Is the following relevant? If it is, can we have enough context to establish what, exactly, Sanger is reacting to from the book, since the context is completely left out:

“ n a review of Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur, Sanger comments ironically on Keen's favorable treatment of Citizendium: "The first example of a 'solution' he offers is the Citizendium, or the Citizens' Compendium, which I like to describe briefly as Wikipedia with editors and real names. But how can Citizendium be a solution to the problems he raises, if it has experts working without pay, and the result is free? If it succeeds, won't it contribute to the decline of reference publishing? ”

If the above is relevant, it needs rewritten to provide the context. If it isn't relevant, throw it out. And, at the very least, it's in the wrong section.

Section: Contrast to Wikipedia

Violates WP:SYNTH. There's porobably a few reasonably-sourced points, but, in the main, the sources consist of 1. People criticising Wikipedia, but not mentioning Citizendium, with context framing these as problems solved by Citizendium. You can't do that. 2. Aspirational statements about what it's hoped Citizendium will achieve, presented without questioning or any backing material. 3. Compare and contrast - this source says Wikipedia does X, this other source says Citizendium does Y. Noone else links these, but we will anyway.

This is a fundamental violation of Wikipedia's policies on original research, and is enough to demote this article by itself unless this section is completely rewritten. As I said, there's probably a few validly-sourced points, but they look to be a minority.

Other

Sources range from acceptable to questionable - the history section directly cites forum posts without secondary sources, for instance, though you MIGHT just be able to get away with that. Lots of use of primary sources and Larry Sanger sources, which is fine to some extent, but there's little balancing material.

The article has one Citation Needed tag.

To be clear:

This article violates WP:WIAGA criteria 2c (Original research), 4 (Neutral), and 2b (reliable sources), and possibly 3b (does not stay focused on the topic) due to the somewhat random interjections of content (though that's probably more of an organizational issue. These need fixed, or it cannot remain a good article. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 03:11, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• Largely concur - how did this article ever make GA in the first place? It's a "not good" article. It appears never to have been a coherent article, but something that's accreted text over the past few years. Needs a complete rewrite from the perspective of 2014 - David Gerard (talk) 08:28, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, I'll give this until the 29th or so for responses, anyway, unless there's a lot of pile-on concurs. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 21:59, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, no-one is stepping forwards to defend it, so... Delisted. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 05:21, 29 January 2014 (UTC)