Talk:Max Boot/GA1

GA Review

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Hi, I'll be reviewing this article. It may take a few days. Ray^Talk 00:40, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

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Overall, I think this article is almost ready for GA status. It's pretty good. I mostly have some copyediting nitpicks below.

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   I'll go into more detail, but there are quite a few grammar and style nits.

   B. MoS compliance:

   No issues here. I didn't compare against everything in WP:WTA, but that's because it's bloated beyond utility.

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   I think it would be helpful for the article to go into the details of the reviews surrounding Boot's books. The quotes are tantalizing without being too helpful, but they do give a good idea of the scope of the reaction. Sufficient for GA.

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

   I have some concerns about undue weight being given, in an attempt to be fairhanded. The American Conservative is really a very marginal publication, and I don't see that it's necessary to quote it so extensively just to have a counterpoint to Boot's viewpoints. Similarly, Nikolas Kozloff is a fairly marginal left-wing political figure writing mostly for Counterpunch, not at all in the same weight class as somebody at CFR and the Wall Street Journal. This isn't enough to pose a bar on the GA level, but I think a warning is merited.

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

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

   It was necessary to go to the Internet Archive, as the pages given in the image data have since been moved, but I was able to do so.

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

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

So the only holdup here are some copyediting issues. I'll go down them in the order in which they appear.

1. In the lead, the second sentence is a touch long and should be split up.
2. The last sentence of the lead is really two sentences and should also be split.
3. In the first paragraph on his career, the juxtaposition of "as well" and "also serves" is unnecessary and a bit too chatty for an encyclopedia. I think they can be dropped without hurting the article.
4. The last sentence of the second paragraph is too long, and I think its structure may cause some confusion. Were Boot's responsibilities purely in the way of his column on the Rule of Law, or was it only one of them? Also, I assume you meant "investigative column" instead of "investigate column."
5. The third paragraph is a bit jarring and seems out of place. There is no clear transition from his journalistic career to foreign policy specialist, and this paragraph jumps ahead abruptly to 2007, then back to 2002, and around again. I think a transition should be written, and his awards might be listed separately.
6. The paragraphs about his books might be in a separate section - while they are major events in his career, they break up the chronological flow of the section.
7. Be careful about attribution for book reviews. If the review is an unsigned review by the editorial board of a newspaper or journal, attributing the review to the publication alone is appropriate. Otherwise, you should attribute the review to the reviewer, while making mention of the publication where it took place.
8. When using the name of a publication as a noun,
9. In the beliefs section, be careful about the use of "as such" - it does not mean "therefore" or "thus." In this case, I think it can be omitted. It also comes up again in the last paragraph - there, "thus" may be better.

That's it! Others may come up with more issues, but those are the outstanding ones that I see. This was a pleasure to read, and I congratulate The Squicks on the amazing amount of very good work he's put into this biography. I'm putting this on hold, since I think the issues I mentioned should be easy to correct. Ray^Talk 19:29, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I tried to rewrite the Career section into a more logical, chronological order. Personally, I'm somewhat opposed to creating a new Books section since I think that the detail about the books works naturally with how his career progress. I also tried to fix the little errors here and there. I hope that the article is GA class now, I really think that it is. The Squicks (talk) 03:19, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations; I agree that the article passes the GA threshold. Ray^Talk 05:18, 31 August 2009 (UTC)