Talk:History of the metric system/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: FishGF (talk · contribs) 19:49, 11 August 2013 (UTC) I hope to be able to review this article over the next few days. FishGF (talk) 19:49, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

The review will be conducted with reference to the good article criteria under the following headings.

Due to more time being needed than I anticipated on another review I am involved in, the review of this article will be delayed longer than I was hoping. I will endeavour to get on with it as soon as possible. FishGF (talk) 19:31, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

1. Well-written?

(to do)

2. Verifiable with no original research?

(to do)

3. Broad in its coverage?

(to do)

4. Neutral?

(to do)

5. Stable?

• There are no current stability concerns. FishGF (talk) 21:00, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

6. Illustrated, if possible, by images?

• Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content?

Detailed review

I'm not a copyright expert, but if I accept in good-faith the declarations and assertions made on the image file pages it would appear that all images are acceptable, with the possible exception of: File:Wilkins An Essay towards a real.jpg - used in the Work of Simon Stevin section - which has a warning notice starting "You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States." FishGF (talk) 20:25, 18 August 2013 (UTC) Licence tag modified. Martinvl (talk) 21:28, 18 August 2013 (UTC) OK. FishGF (talk) 20:45, 22 August 2013 (UTC) File:Watt James von Breda.jpg - used in the 18th Century international cooperation section - which has a copyright warning notice. FishGF (talk) 20:25, 18 August 2013 (UTC) This is a warning that the image might be in breach of copyright, not that it is in breach of copyright. This page details the history of the case up to February 2010. The case has now been dormant for three years which suggests that nobody is proceeding with it. In July 2011 User:DCoetzee uploaded a newer version of the file, suggesting that agreement has been reached and this report suggests that if the National Portrait Gallery does continue with action, they will have to explain their own actions to the judge first. Given the high profile that this has received, let the legal eagles sort things out. If there is a problem, it will be flagged by means of the template that is there. Martinvl (talk) 21:28, 18 August 2013 (UTC) OK. FishGF (talk) 20:50, 22 August 2013 (UTC) File:Horloge-republicaine4.jpg - used in the Decimal time (1793) section - which has a warning notice starting "You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States." FishGF (talk) 20:25, 18 August 2013 (UTC) Licence tag modified. Martinvl (talk) 21:28, 18 August 2013 (UTC) OK. FishGF (talk) 20:58, 22 August 2013 (UTC) File:Joule's Apparatus (Harper's Scan).png - used in the Time, work and energy section - which has a warning notice starting "This image might not be in the public domain outside of the United States; this especially applies in the countries and areas that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works, such as Canada, ..." FishGF (talk) 20:25, 18 August 2013 (UTC) Licence tag modified. Martinvl (talk) 21:28, 18 August 2013 (UTC) OK. FishGF (talk) 21:02, 22 August 2013 (UTC) File:Metric seal.svg - used in the Convention of the metre section - which has a warning notice starting "You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States." FishGF (talk) 20:25, 18 August 2013 (UTC) Licence tag modified. Martinvl (talk) 21:28, 18 August 2013 (UTC) OK. FishGF (talk) 21:03, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

• Images are relevant to the topic

I cannot see the relevance of the following images:

• The poppy field with Rodez in the background. FishGF (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• See below Martinvl (talk) 21:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

• The BIPM seal which isn't mentioned in the prose. FishGF (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• See below Martinvl (talk) 21:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

• The Joules apparatus which isn't mentioned in the prose. FishGF (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• See below

• The foreign-language conversion table with no English translation. FishGF (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• Caption improved. See below. Martinvl (talk) 21:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

• The four measuring devices. FishGF (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• See below Martinvl (talk) 21:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

The following are of marginal relevance:

• James Watt, of no more importance than several other people, and mentioned just once elsewhere. FishGF (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• All of the above - if you look at WP:IMAGE RELEVANCE, you will see that it says "Images must be relevant to the article that they appear in and be significantly and directly related to the article's topic." It does not say that the text has to reference the image. In my view they are all relevant to the section or subsection where they appear. Martinvl (talk) 21:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

• I am not questioning whether the text references the images, I am questioning their relevance to the article and whether they indeed are significantly and directly related to the article's topic. Please, for each of the images I listed above, explain how they satisfy those conditions. FishGF (talk) 22:20, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

• Obviously you and I have differing views. Lets leave this for a this for comments from a third party. Martinvl (talk) 22:30, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

• Images have suitable captions

• The captions are not consistent with Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Captions, particularly their conciseness and punctuation (some have full-stops, some don't). FishGF (talk) 21:10, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

(Correction: Sorry, I misquoted the manual above, I should have used the word "succinctness", and not "conciseness". FishGF (talk) 11:03, 28 August 2013 (UTC) )

• Corrected. Martinvl (talk) 21:55, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

• The punctuation has been corrected. I know the question of succinctness is more subjective, but some of the captions, that on the boundary stone picture for example, hold much unnecessary verbiage. FishGF (talk) 16:40, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

• I disagree about the boundary stone image.

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Captions#Some criteria for a good caption states "There are several criteria for a good caption. A good caption

1. "clearly identifies the subject of the picture, without detailing the obvious.
2. "is succinct.
3. "establishes the picture's relevance to the article.
4. "provides context for the picture.
5. "draws the reader into the article."

The caption for the boundary stone image reads "Old boundary stone in Pontebba, marking the former border between Austria-Hungary and Italy. The myriametre (10 km) was in common use in Central Europe during the mid nineteenth century." The first sentence satisfies item 1 of the above list - do you know where Pontebba is? The second sentence satisfies items 3, 4 wnd 5. How do you propose shortening this caption? Martinvl (talk) 19:37, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

• The parts are all there, but they could be more succint, especially now that you have added the Wikilinks - it is the unit and not the geography that is the more relevant to this article. How about: An old boundary stone in Pontebba using the myriametre (10 km), a unit used in Central Europe in the 19th century. FishGF (talk) 11:12, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

• How about "Stone marking the Austro-Hungarian/Italian border at Pontebba displaying myriametres (10 km), a unit used in Central Europe in the 19th century"? Martinvl (talk) 17:09, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

• That's hardly more succint, and what about all the others - that was just one example of many - do I need to itemise each and every one, or can they be worked through and the irrelevant detail removed without that? FishGF (talk) 20:29, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• The page Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles states "... but take care not to impose conditions for passing the article, perhaps based on your own stylistic preferences, that exceed the criteria...". The closeness of your preferred caption (112 characters) and my preferred caption 142 characters) suggests that you might be heading that way. 25 of the additional characters that I added was the wording "Austro-Hungarian/Italian " (including the space). I do not intend going through all the captions again, but may I suggest that you look at some of the captions in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Captions, particularly the caption of the last image on the page. Martinvl (talk) 20:48, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
• I'm only going by the criteria, and succinct means brief and clear. Ask yourself why you need to mention that it is on the Austro-Hungarian/Italian border with the Pontebba link. Some of the other captions are very long-winded too, and it is less than clear what they are getting at. FishGF (talk) 21:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• I do not intend discussing this further other than with an uninvolved third party. Martinvl (talk) 15:48, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

• Will you start that other discussion then please, so that we can move forward on this. FishGF (talk) 21:08, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

FishGF (talk) 19:59, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Review procedure

Will the reviewer please refrain from changing comments once a response has been made. In particular, he wrote "... particularly their conciseness ...". A response was made and he then replaced the word "conciseness" with "succinctness". On reading the thread, one cannot see whether the response was to the word "conciseness" or to the word "succinctness". Martinvl (talk) 07:13, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Fair point, sorry about the confusion there, I've put it back and added a comment. FishGF (talk) 11:03, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Will you please finish your review of International System of Units before getting too deeply into this review? Martinvl (talk) 21:13, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I moved to this article whilst the other one is being heavily reworked. See the request I have just added there. FishGF (talk) 21:39, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Resubmission as a Good Article

FishGF has shown himself to be incapable of conducting a GA review - both this review and the review for International System of Units got bogged down due to him getting unduly involved in minutiae of the articles concerned. Martinvl (talk) 23:27, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Martinvl, your behaviour over this is disgraceful. The reason I failed the International System of Units article was, as I stated in the review summary, because you were dragging your heels, to the extent of being obstructive, in dealing with the issues I raised. The essential changes required, and that you refused to accept, were minor and simple to implement. You only have yourself to blame for the failure there. Following my experience with you and that article, I asked how to withdraw from reviewing this article, as you surely know. You the decided to fail it yourself and, again, try to blame me. FishGF (talk) 17:05, 13 September 2013 (UTC)