Talk:Coal in Turkey/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Ganesha811 (talk · contribs) 15:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi! I'm opening a Good Article Nomination review. Hoping to complete the review over the next couple of days. I'll be using the template below. Thanks! Ganesha811 (talk) 15:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Great - if anything is wrong please could you let me know and give me a few days to fix it - thanks Chidgk1 (talk) 17:45, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Chidgk1, hi! I've started the GA review. The review is not complete yet, but there are issues that would prevent this article from passing now, so I wanted to bring them up before proceeding. First off, thanks for your hard work on this article! It's an important topic and I'm glad Wikipedia is covering it now thanks to your efforts.

The issues are detailed below, but the most serious is coverage - this article simply does not have enough coverage / content on important areas of the topic like 'History'. Unless this and other sections are expanded with good, well-referenced content, the article will not pass GA review.

I see a few ways we can proceed. Let me know which one you would prefer, and we'll do that.

1) If you have a lot of time very soon (within the next week), you can work to expand the article rapidly, and I can continue my review after that.

2) I can put the GA review on a formal hold, and give you a little longer (say a month) to expand the article. After that month, I can un-hold the review and return to the nomination.

3) I can fail the nomination now, and you can take all the time you need to work on the article before re-nominating it for GA status. If you choose this option, I'd be happy to continue providing advice, and promise that once you re-nominate it, I'd start reviewing the article again right away.

Whichever you choose, I'll act accordingly. This article is a great start, but needs improvement to come up to GA status. Ganesha811 (talk) 17:37, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Option 1) please. I will add a little more history now and check whether more info is available re residential heating and other consumption.Chidgk1 (talk) 13:45, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Chidgk1, ok! I'll check back in in a bit over a week. Generally, as you go through, try to expand and edit the other sections as well. I didn't mention it below, but in general, this article should do a better job reflecting summary style. Remember that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, meaning that while statistics and facts are good, this article should provide an *encyclopedic* description of coal use in Turkey, and only contain the information needed to give a complete picture of the subject - it doesn't need to include *every* piece of information you can find on the topic.

Expanding those sections I mentioned will be a great start, but please take a look through the others as well to balance the two needs of broad coverage and summary style. Thanks for your work on this! Ganesha811 (talk) 14:49, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Hello @Ganesha811: Thanks for your patience. I have an unexpected amount of work now (fortunately not health related - just struggling with how best to work online) so could we possibly change to putting this article on hold for a month? I hope to have more time for Wikipedia in a week or two.Chidgk1 (talk) 06:03, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Chidgk1, sure, I'll do that. Thanks for your hard work on this, I can see the effort you have already put in over the last week. Ganesha811 (talk) 13:06, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Hello @Ganesha811: Thanks for holding - I am back working on it now. Chidgk1 (talk) 07:19, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Chidgk1, great! Let me know when you would like me to start the review again. GA nominees should not be undergoing expansion or significant work while they are reviewed, so I'll wait till you are ready. Ganesha811 (talk) 01:39, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Ganesha811 I am not intending to make any major changes except in response to your review so please go ahead when convenient for you.

Cool, I will begin the review again tomorrow. Ganesha811 (talk) 01:47, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

• In terms of prose, try to make sure that you vary the way you say "As of year X". You instead use "In Year X", or use the year as an adjective: "The 2018 unemployment numbers were X". If the numbers are very likely to stay the same over the next 10-20 years, you can even omit the year. Femke Nijsse (talk) 09:41, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Some minor points

Note that I'm not a native English speaker/writer, my ideas on what is good in writing and what is not may be incorrect:

• Check for howevers. There are 16 of them, and most are unnecessary, unjustified. Examples: "flue emissions standards were finally improved at the end of the 2010s, resulting in the closure of a few older plants. However most steelmaking plants are now electric arc furnaces" - no apparent contradiction or controversy. "However stoves burning coal and wood are still sometimes used for heating in rural areas, and even occasionally for cooking[86] although bottled gas is available everywhere". There are reasons why availability of bottled gas is not enough, starting with cost of conversion, cost of gas itself, safety, delivery infrastructure... Pollution is a serious argument against coal, but it only makes sense in the cities. Out in the mountains, a heap of coal is a much safer and wiser choice.

Good point - I will get rid of most of the howevers. But as for the mountains - coal where you live may be safer than bottled gas in rural areas but as Turkish coal is low quality I suspect it will pollute more than gas indoors even with a good flue.

• The chapter on subsidies looks vague. "Most subsidized", "multiple subsidies", and then a few numbers in ₺ millions. They aren't familiar to anyone outside of Turkey. Perhaps this is when percentages will be more readable: %% of state budget, or %% of subsidies in end prices, etc.

Yes you are right - I will try to find % info.

• "coal mining employed 10,000 in 13 public-sector workplaces and 26,000 in 430 private-sector workplaces", yet "most of the male population of Zonguldak city [pop=109,080] worked in coal mines" - ? Indeed, 36000 would make more than half of male population, but then most of 36000 nationwide are in brown coal, not Zonguldak hard?

Yes according to https://www.nufusu.com/ilce/merkez_zonguldak-nufusu there are 61,000 men and boys in Zonguldak city, so I suspect to be more correct the source should have written "more than half of the working male population of Zonguldak city work for coal-related organisations", which would be just about plausible: because as far as I understand it brown coal in Turkey is mostly opencast, so much less labor-intensive than the mines in Zonguldak. And the Zonguldak male students, unemployed and retired would need to be subtracted. So I will change the sentence to "...most working men in Zonguldak city are employed in the coal industry".

• "2 million tons a year" and "most of the male population of Zonguldak city" - this looks disproportionate even for illegal foxholes. I know what I'm talking about, I worked for a mine that lifted 3 MT hard coal a year. There were around 2500 men including coal-processing plant, surface railroad, slag brick plant etc. 2500 men for 3MT/year, and that was deemed obsolete an inefficient thirty years ago. So how many miners are there in Zonguldak, in absolute numbers, really?

Good question as this may even more become politically sensitive given the ongoing danger to retired miners, so I will try to find out. But there are very few academic studies about how Zonguldak can be supported in future.

• "As of 2019, however, Turkey had not implemented a "just transition" policy" - Just Transition or something else?

Oops I thought I had linked it previously - will link to Just Transition

Retired electrician (talk) 15:01, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

@Retired electrician: Not sure if you would know this as it would be outside your former job I guess, but I am a bit confused about the types of coal. "Lignite" is clear and I think "hardcoal" is correct as a translation of "taşkömür" as "taş" means "rock". "Antrasit" is "anthracite". But I am not sure the note 1. I wrote is correct about "bituminous coal" and "anthracite". In the lead I wrote "Almost all local coal is lignite, whereas Turkey imports almost all of the bituminous coal it uses." but maybe it should say "Almost all local coal is lignite but Turkey imports a lot of other coal."? Chidgk1 (talk) 14:31, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	There are several places where the phrasing raises more questions than it answers. For example: "Some power stations in Zonguldak and Muğla consume large quantities of fresh water.[67]" What is a large quantity? Why are only these two stations singled out for inclusion? Remember to keep to summary style - if the information isn't encyclopedic, it doesn't necessarily need to be included. "Due to the country's geology, coal mines must reach very deep to obtain coal of decent quality." What is decent quality? How deep is very deep? What about the geology of Turkey shapes this? "As of 2020 the CEO of the sovereign wealth fund wants to invest in coal." Who is the CEO? Why do they want to do this? Why is this information relevant to the article and how can it be better placed in context? I have attempted to clarify all the above - if any problems remain please let me know Chidgk1 (talk) 08:21, 19 May 2020 (UTC) Issues addressed. I've made some flow/grammar edits myself throughout the article. Pass.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	Pass, no issues.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	Some unsourced claims present a problem: "In the early 21st century there was a growing realisation of coal's damage to health.... resulting in the closure of a few older plants." "There would also be health and environmental benefits, but these are difficult to quantify as very little official data is released on the local pollution by the plants and mines." Please add sources for these. Cites added Chidgk1 (talk) 08:21, 19 May 2020 (UTC) Thanks for adding those - I found one more while doing my prose runthrough, added a citation needed tag, under 'Politics.' In addition, please revamp the 'Sources' section to bring it into a particular citation style - see solar power for an example. Other examples can be seen at WP:GENREF and WP:CITESHORT. The External links section can also be improved - see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#External_links. I'd recommend using some of the templates there. I know fixing sources is a pain, but it's needed here, and it's the last major area of improvement standing between this article and GA. We're nearly there! Ganesha811 (talk) 13:28, 19 May 2020 (UTC) Other sources notes - please add translations of all the Turkish-language article titles to the citations. There is a "translated title" field for citations that should be filled for non-English-titled sources. A number of citations are missing authors, dates and other information - I know that for government reports etc that may not always be easily available, but please double check and add where you can find it. Source 78 is appearing strangely in the list - please make sure it's formatted correctly. Ganesha811 (talk) 13:38, 19 May 2020 (UTC) I have tidied up the sources somewhat but I am not sure it is worth doing much more for 2 reasons 1) As the visual editor citing is being improved I hope to use that more in future articles as it will be easier for new editors to change the article. So I don't want to spend time learning more about how to do cites manually. 2) A lot of the sources are likely to be replaced next year anyway. But if there are quick and easy changes let me know and I will do them. On the other hand I am happy to spend more time improving the external links as they are likely to be in the article much longer. The problem is I have never used external link templates before and there are hundreds to choose from. Can you advise more exactly what I need to do to improve the external links? Thank you for your hard work improving the sources - they are substantially (and sufficiently) better. As to the external links, I'm not very familiar myself, but it shouldn't be a barrier to the article passing GA. However, if you put it on your to-do list for the future, it would be a benefit to the article. Ganesha811 (talk) 12:53, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	Provisional pass. It's difficult for me to assess many of these sources, as I'm not a speaker of Turkish or familiar with the Turkish media landscape. However, they mostly seem reliable. According to Wiki itself, the Daily Sabah may not be a reliable source. I'm also unsure about triplepundit.com. Argus Media seems to be ok as an industry source. triplepundit cited sentence removed and replaced by sentence in water consumption section with a different cite. I think where I have cited Daily Sabah it is reliable - but if any are shaky let me know which as I can probably replace it with other sources No, that should be fine. Thanks. Pass.
	2c. it contains no original research.	Pass, assuming citation needed above is addressed.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	Pass. No issues found.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	Pass. This has been substantially improved. Nice work! Coverage is now comprehensive.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	This has been substantially improved. Facts are placed in better context and it's a well-organized article. I moved the 'residential use' section to History - it fit better there than under 'Subsidies.' Pass.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	Pass.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	Significant changes have been made, but in response to GA comments. No edit warring. Pass.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	Pass. No issues.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	Pass. Pass. After much work and substantial improvement, this article has reached GA status. Will do the needful now. Ganesha811 (talk) 12:53, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
	7. Overall assessment.