Talk:Felicity Goodyear-Smith/GA1

My usual procedure when reviewing an article is to note below any issues I see that fail the GA criteria. These will need to be fixed or I will need to be convinced that they are fine as is before I will be willing to pass the article. I also usually leave comments on what I think can be improved. Most of these are beyond the GA criteria, so the article may still pass if these are not fixed. I welcome any discussion about any comments I make here. AIRcorn (talk) 05:55, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Failed "good article" nomination

This article has failed its Good article nomination. This is how the article, as of April 13, 2017, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: This criteria needs a lot of work before this meets good article standard. The article has too much timeline structure (i.e many sentences have some variation of in this year she did this) instead of containing structured prose. Also many of the paragraphs are very short and choppy which affects the flow quite a bit. A large collection of facts have been presented but the need to be tied together better for this to become a good article. For an example, many of the separate publications under the different sub headings in the Career section are discussing similar topics and can be combined.

2. Verifiable?: Have not source checked comprehensively, but have noticed a lot of WP:primary sources are used. There are also lot of external links embedded in the text. This is almost always not appropriate as readers expect blue links to take them to another wikipedia article, not another site. If they are used to support a claim then they should be linked as a reference. If they provide addition information then they should be presented under a dedicated external links section.

3. Broad in coverage?: Nothing on her life outside her work. Don't really need much but most biographies have some information about family, interests or other aspects. Also judging from the controversies header and the tone of her own website she has been criticised a lot for her publications. This should be handled carefully, as the scientific view takes precedence over ideological ones and we don't want to create a WP:False balance. However, I feel there needs to be more context to some of the controversial papers. An area I am personally interested in is GMOs and while her paper supports the mainstream scientific view, given New Zealands anti GM stance I would expect there to be some negative comments about it. She even says as much on her website. Again care needs to be taken to avoid false balance and to keep the scientific consensus front and center, but that does not preclude a short mention saying that this was contested by anti-GM groups. I would imagine that some of her other papers and research received even harsher criticism and this should be presented in context.

4. Neutral point of view?: The heading Career and Controversies is problematic and should not exist as a combined heading. In fact any sections headed Controversy should be used sparingly in BLPs. They are a magnet for WP:Undue or worse claims. If something is notable enough it should get its own heading or just be included under career.

5. Stable?: There has been some back and forward with another user relatively recently (history). This may explain the nature of the prose. Not unstable enough to fail this criteria though.

6. Images?: Same image as used on her website and looks to have been uploaded to commons by Goodyear-Smith. I would assume she has rights to the photo even though it has been taken professionally so I believe it should be fine (images are not a strong point of my editing).

Sorry to do this, but I feel the issues with this article as it stands are too great to be rectified easily. I think the structure itself is part of the problem (especially the career section) and this probably needs to be fixed first. If you have any questions you are welcome t leave them on my talk page

When these issues are addressed, the article can be renominated. If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to have it reassessed. Thank you for your work so far.— AIRcorn (talk) 07:14, 13 April 2017 (UTC)