Talk:Horses in warfare/GA1

GA Reassessment

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force in an effort to ensure all listed Good articles continue to meet the Good article criteria. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed. I am unsure however whether this pass for GA or not, and am going to seek wider community opinion on the issue with a formal Good Article Reassessment. I have left a list of my comments below to illustrate the areas I am having difficulty with.

• It is reasonably well written.

  a (prose): b (MoS):

The lead is too short and should attempt to summarise the article better. This is a related problem of that of length (see below), as I think the sheer volume of information here makes a representative lead difficult.--Jackyd101 (talk) 13:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

The article keeps flipping between BC and BCE, please choose one and stick to it.

• It is factually accurate and verifiable.

  a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

Many of the online citations are improperly formatted, see citations section below. In addition, the sections "Medium-weight horses", "Training and deployment", "Islamic world" , "Renaissance and Early Modern Period", "Historical reenactment" and "Equestrian competition" are very thin on citations. There are also tags in "Riding equiment" and "20th century"--Jackyd101 (talk) 13:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

• It is broad in its coverage.

  a (major aspects): b (focused):

It is certainly broad, but a lot of the tactics and ideas discussed should have their own articles (many already do). These should be more clearly linked from this one as being a wider assesment of that particular topic.--Jackyd101 (talk) 13:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

• It follows the neutral point of view policy.

  a (fair representation): b (all significant views):

• It is stable.

  

• It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

  a (tagged and captioned): b (lack of images does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):

• Overall:

  a Pass/Fail:

• The issue of length: Although not actionable and not a barrier to this article retaining GA status, the article has a length problem. With so much to discuss on what is a very complicated topic, the article is quite overwhelming even for me, who is used to lengthy articles. I strongly recommend that the article be split at least in half, with everything from Types of etc. down to History in one article and the history section in another. This will make the article much easier to read and digest.
• I notice there are some comments within the text asking questions that have not been answered, these need to be addressed.

Feel free to drop a message on my talk page if you have any questions, and many thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this article thus far. Regards, Jackyd101 (talk) 13:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Citations

The internet inline citations used in this article are improperly formatted. Internet citations require at the very least information on the title, publisher and last access date of any webpages used. If the source is a news article then the date of publication and the author are also important. This information is useful because it allows a reader to a) rapidly identify a source's origin b) ascertain the reliability of that source and c) find other copies of the source should the website that hosts it become unavaliable for any reason. It may also in some circumstances aid in determining the existance or status of potential copyright infringments. Finally, it looks much tidier, making the article appear more professional. There are various ways in which this information can be represented in the citation, listed at length at Wikipedia:Citing sources. The simplest way of doing this is in the following format:

<ref>{{cite web|(insert URL)|title=|publisher=|work=|date=|author=|accessdate=}}</ref>

As an example:

• <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.discovery.org/a/3859|title=Avoiding a Thirty Years War|publisher=www.discovery.org|work=[[The Washington Post]]|date=2006-12-21|author=Richard W. Rahn|accessdate=2008-05-25}}</ref>

which looks like:

• Richard W. Rahn (2006-12-21). "Avoiding a Thirty Years War". The Washington Post. www.discovery.org. Retrieved 2008-05-25.

If any information is unknown then simply omit it, but title, publisher and last access dates are always required. I strongly recommend that all internet inline references in this article be formatted properly. If you have any further questions please contact me and as mentioned above, more information on this issue can be found at Wikipedia:Citing sources. Regards--Jackyd101 (talk) 13:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

The web sources are now standardized. We're working on the missing page numbers. (Hint hint Montana). Should see a marked improvement in the sourcing, although there are still a few rough spots. The lead will be worked on shortly, as soon as things calm down with the citing of things. I'm going to try to hunt through some other references to find citations for the last bits on the historical section. Ealdgyth - Talk 22:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Montana knows she has to paginate several articles! My bad...intentions excellent, though we know what road is paved with those. Patience begged. Montanabw^(talk) 17:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Community GA

Here are comments from the community GAR:

Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Horses in warfare/1

Overkill and have some patience please!

I am in the process of responding to this over at the other page, for crying out loud, it's been less than 48 hours since you tagged this and you are already tearing it apart without so much as a "what can you do" to myself, the lead editor on this article, nor anyone on wikiproject Equine, which has been supporting this article for months!

I only ask that you please cool your jets until we can look your comments over and see what we can do. It could be a week or more before we get all our editors together, I am pretty busy with real life, Gwinva is on vacation, Ealdgyth is still on the road, and Dana is up to her ears with trying to get another article to GA. We will address the concerns that you raise, but can you be so kind as to hold off on the race to delist? Thanks. Montanabw^(talk) 03:10, 17 July 2008 (UTC)