Talk:Iván Nova/GA1

GA Review

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

Reviewer: Batard0 (talk · contribs) 15:58, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll take this one up. At first reading, it seems to have virtually no issues. I'll give it a more careful look, though, and get back to it in a bit.--Batard0 (talk) 15:58, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for picking it up. I imagine anything you find will be minor; I'm proud of how this article turned out. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:42, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Review:

• I can't find very many issues with the prose. It's clear and concise, and I certainly don't see any trouble with grammar.

• I took the liberty of fixing some minor, minor things, like "fathers'" where it should be "father's".

• I moved a "however" from the beginning of a sentence in the lead to the middle. It's generally better not to start with "However," since that can cause confusion with other sentence-starting expressions like "However hard he tried, he could not make the team." I always start sentences with "But" or "Yet" when I need to immediately draw a contrast with the preceding sentence. I fixed a couple of these -- I hope you don't mind.

• I also added a hyphen in "two-week tryout" under the Minor league career section; "two-week" is a compound adjective and hence takes a hyphen.

• I changed an instance of "MLB" in the pro career section to "the league," because "MLB" appeared twice in the sentence.

• I changed "his longest start of his career" to "the longest start of his career." I think the latter reads slightly better.

• I'd consider changing "while walking none, allowing four hits and striking out seven" to simply "while striking out seven." If you want to keep all of these stats in there, I would think about doing it in two sentences to make it clearer: "On June 20, Nova had the longest start in his career, allowing one run in eight innings against the Cincinnati Reds. He had no walks, four hits and struck out seven."

• I'm not sure I understand the following (re: his return to the minors): "as Nova had minor league options remaining." Is this something contractual? Is there perhaps a clearer way of saying this? It read to me as if Nova had some kind of option he wanted to pursue in the minor leagues, so he left the bigs. Obviously this isn't the case...

• I took out a hyphen from "called back up"

• The wikilinks aren't needed in the caption on the San Diego photo.

• In the following bit, you might consider rephrasing it for clarity: "He remained in the rotation, as manager Joe Girardi went with a six-man rotation later in the season." Is there any way to explain why this meant he could stay in the rotation? Did Girardi add a rotation spot to keep him? It may also be smart to rephrase slightly so you don't repeat "rotation": "He remained a starter" "a starting pitcher" etc.

• When we say "Nova competed for a spot in the starting rotation for the 2012 season in spring training." Can we say he "secured" a spot or something like that? "Competed" is unresolved; he won a spot on the rotation, no?

• No need to link Dominican Republic in the final section; it's linked in Early life.

• You might consider unlinking signing bonus, per the general preference for unlinked plain text. I think people will understand a signing bonus without needing to research it thoroughly. I won't complain if you want to keep it in, though.

• I would consider removing the first appearance of "baseball" in the first sentence of the lead. We say he's a baseball pitcher in Major League Baseball, making the repeated "baseball" redundant. You also have two links smashed together, which the Wiki stylebook isn't keen on; this would solve that problem. I looked at the FA Moe Berg for guidance here.

• I'd also consider unlinking Boston and Yankees in the quote box in the Early Life section. You have these linked in the main text, and there's no need to link things repeatedly.

Summary: This is excellent work. This is how GA submissions should be done. It met all the criteria, but just needed some slight tweaking here and there. I'll promote it, but I want to see first if you want to respond to anything brought up above. Well done.

I've looked through this again, and on second thought I think it's important to address the concerns raised above. It's very close and these are relatively minor things, but I'd rather not list the article without having fully discussed the parts of the article where there were issues.--Batard0 (talk) 05:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Oh no problem. It seems like all of your changes are on the money, and the few remaining issues are valid. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• "while walking none, allowing four hits and striking out seven" - fixed
• Wikilinks removed from Padres picture, and Boston/New York quote.
• Re: "options", in the first usage (first paragraph of MLB section), I added a wikilink that should help to explain what is meant by options. For young players, as in with less than a few complete seasons of service time, the team has the "option" to send the player to the minor leagues.
• Clarified the six-man rotation. In baseball (these days), teams usually have a five-man rotation, but the Yankees expanded it to six to keep Nova in it.
• "Competed" --> "secured"
• Lead tweak to not say "baseball" twice in one sentence. I've seen it done that way in other GA's (Eduardo Núñez is one example).
• I'd rather keep signing bonus linked, since it does have a wikipage and people might wonder why there is a signing bonus.

Ok, I think these have been addressed adequately. I made a very small tweak to the lead, joining the first two sentences for flow, but it's really inconsequential.--Batard0 (talk) 04:18, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

---

Having made a few tweaks, the article meets GA criteria. It didn't need much work.

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   The prose is clear and concise, and is free of grammar and spelling mistakes.

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

   MoS compliance is there.

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   The sources are generally news articles, but this is about as good as one could expect for a young pitcher.

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Inline citations are included where necessary.

   C. No original research:

   There's no OR here.

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   It's broad in its coverage.

   B. Focused:

   It doesn't go into unnecessary detail.

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

   It's neutral.

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

   It's stable.

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   All the images are in commons.

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

   The images are appropriate for the article.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   A well-formulated GA. Well done.