Talk:Mexican Repatriation/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: 3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk · contribs) 11:01, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Comments by 3E1I5S8B9RF7

Before I start the process, all the sources should be formatted correctly. References number 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 16 and 17 cite books, but have no exact page specifications, which is a problem. Also, the lede should be more clear: what triggered the repatriation? Did the government participate in it or was it just a local act? What areas were affected? All this needs to be corrected and clarified first.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 11:01, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

@3E1I5S8B9RF7: I forgot about this when you posted it because holidays/family, but have now come back to it. On the lead, I've rewritten it a bit to tighten/address these points; let me know what you think.

On the inline citations, two points:

1. Several of these are entire books on the topic, so giving specific pages in the closing References section doesn't make much sense; instead, the article uses [[Template:Rp|]] to give (currently) 70 inline specific page citations. For example, of the 17 citations to Hoffman (#3, which you mention), 14 of them have specific pages, and one of the ones that doesn't is in the lead; similarly of the 28 references to Balderrama (#4) outside of the lead (#4), 23 have page specific cites.
2. Per What The Good Article Criteria Are Not, not all cites need page numbers; only specific types of claims. I haven't reviewed all the citations (there are a lot of them!) but I don't think any of the ones with missing page numbers meet the criteria set out in the GA rules.

Given those two things, I'd appreciate it if you reopen the review. If you point out specific citations in-line that need page cites consistent with the GA rules I'll be happy to fix them as best as I can.

Thanks. —Luis (talk) 21:59, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

This was all almost half a year ago, so I don't know anymore. You would need to re-nominate it for a GA article again, first, before we could proceed further.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 07:05, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Renominated last night, thanks. —Luis (talk) 14:39, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

I once again invite you to correct the sources into a proper format. The way pages are specified for the books, in the current form, is not GA material. You need to take a look at other GAs: Indonesian occupation of East Timor, for instance, uses ordinary citations for books (example: Schwarz (1994), p. 195; Dunn (1996), p. 53–54; Vickers (2005), p. 166). There is also the second option, the Sfn template, used in this and this article. You can use either one of them, but the sources need to be restructured, because in this form, they are a mess.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 07:30, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

@3E1I5S8B9RF7: If there are specific policies or guidelines I'm violating, I'm happy to fix them. But in re-reading all the relevant policies that I know of, I keep coming back to 'what a good article is not', which specifically says "[i]f you are able to figure out what the source is, that's a good enough citation for GA."

As best as I can tell, these citations go well beyond this GA requirement. In virtually all cases citations have both page numbers and links to the source material - that's pretty much as good as can get with 'able to figure out what the source is'. ('What a GA is not' even says you don't have to use consistent citations, which this article definitely does, so again - seems to me to be above and beyond the GA standard.)

Additional policies that might be relevant:

• rp is specifically documented as an acceptable method in the main guidelines for source citation;
• the rp template documentation specifically says the best use case for rp is "sources that are used many times in the same article" (precisely the case with the books here); and
• the Manual of Style (linked to from the GA guidelines) specifically says editors may use any citation method they choose.

Again, if you've got pointers to other policies I should be following, please let me know; I'm happy to make improvements. But I'm pretty comfortable this is within the bounds of the GA review. Happy to take it to the GA discussion boards if you think we should get a second opinion. —Luis (talk) 21:33, 29 May 2018 (UTC)