Talk:Oblivion (roller coaster)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Oddbodz (talk · contribs) 11:24, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Well written

The article is clear and consist without compromising on detail. It follows the MoS guidelines for a Good Article.

Verifiable

The article is mostly cited. However, a few sections do still contain original research (Opening and the last paragraph of Ride Experience are my main concerns). These would need to be cited before the article was awarded GA status.

Broad coverage

Yes, the article stays on topic and avoids unneeded detail. I feel it has got the balance between the two correct.

Neutral

The article has a neutral point of view. Even when mentioning positives or negatives of the ride, they are stated as fact, rather than in a promotional or critical tone.

Stable

Looking a the edit history, the article has no evidence of any recent instability.

Images

Considering the short length of the ride, I feel the images are sufficient and they are all free images with no licensing issues. I feel that perhaps including the ride's logo under fair use could benefit the article but I don't see a lack of this a reason to fail the article.

Conclusion

The only real issue I have is the lack of citations in those sections I mentioned above. I will put the GA nomination on hold while these issues are addressed. I will check back in a week to reassess this area. If you resolve this issue before this time, please leave a note on my talk page and I will come back to reassess earlier. Oddbodz (talk) 11:39, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Comment

This article is nowhere close to meeting the GA criterion. It is largely unsourced; some of the cited sources are unreliable; there are internal contradictions of facts, while other claims are contradicted by the cited sources. And there are numerous grammatical errors, and prose is often poor. I recommend that the editors involved and the reviewer take another careful look at the article. (If they need me to point out specific examples of the problems I listed, I'll be happy to). Abecedare (talk) 08:34, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

@Abecedare: Hi. Can you point out what you are specifically refering to? I have removed some unreliable sources, and a statement that had come into doubt due to lack of sourcing. I can't see any spelling mistakes etc, and would appreciate your help. Thanks, --Mdann52talk to me! 18:29, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Here are some of the issues with the version that you last edited:

1. The lede does not summarize the article contents adequately. See WP:LEDE
2. "..., it is the third fastest..." should be "..., as of 2009 it was the third fastest..."
3. The article lists a drop height of both 180 feet and 196 feet. (Earlier it listed two drop angles too, but that has been fixed.)
4. "Surrounding the area were signs announcing the arrival of a world's first, codenamed 'SW4'" Poorly phrased and not supported by cited source.
5. "Before Oblivion opened, in 1997, " should be "In 1997, before Oblivion opened, ..."
6. "... some marketing memorabilia was released, and its own brand of deodorant." Huh?
7. "...the area was re-themed to look like a sinister government facility, unlike the fairground theme that Fantasy World had previously,..." Incorrect parallelism.
8. "...repainted to blue and silver instead of green and yellow stripes." Needs rephrasing.
9. "Both rides were repainted to fit to the new theme like the Black Hole tent." Clunky prose.
10. "In 2011, the area around Oblivion has been given..." should be "In 2011 the area around Oblivion was given..."
11. "despite the fact that the drop is actually 180 ft." Why both "the fact" and "actually"? Also improper tense.
12. "The car slowly ascends 60 feet at a 45 degree angle to build tension, then levels out, slowly travelling around a curve as they approach the drop,..." What does the pronoun they refer to ?
13. "The car slowly ... when the train is hanging over the edge." Where do all these details come from ? They are not in the cited source.
14. "Oblivion's drop has an angle of 87°" Stand alone and redundant sentence.
15. " true scientific facts" as opposed to "false scientific facts" ?
16. "With the new roller coaster The Smiler opening in 2013, Oblivion is no longer the only coaster in X Sector." seems to contradict the earlier mention of Black Hole roller coaster. This may be a factual error, or result of unclear pharsing
17. These user reviews are not a reliable source for wikipedia.
18. In fact, it is not clear to me why any of the sources cited in the article, other than BBC and Telegraph, should be considered reliable per the WP:IRS standard. Most of them appear to be merely fan operated sites of unknown veracity. (I must admit that I am not familiar with sourcing in this area, so if there is existing consensus at the relevant wikiproject or WP:RSN that these sources are acceptable then that is fine with me.)

    Just a comment regarding the reliability of some sources. References by RCDB.com, Ultimaterollercoaster.com, and Ushsho.com (specifically the Best Roller Coaster Poll published at Ushsho.com) are used in many featured articles and lists, as well as other good articles. Themeparkgc  Talk  23:15, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

19. Large sections of the article have no inline citation, or their contents are not supported by the cited source (a few examples listed above.)

In my view, the article needs to be essentially re-written to reduce the clunkiness of the prose. After the primary editors have taken care of the verifiability and sourcing issues, perhaps they can contact WP:GOCE for help with copyediting. Abecedare (talk) 21:29, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

The citations were a mess when I looked at this last night: erroneous formats (eg basic errors such as "publisher" instead of "work"), an inconsistent mix of every possible dating format (despite being tagged {{use dmy dates}} since October 2010), incorrectly titled sources, etc. I also concur with Abecedare above - the prose is awkward and tortuous and the article needs a thorough re-write. This is nowhere close to GA quality. BlackberrySorbet 12:11, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Done more improvement; @Themeparkgc: can you check over the sources; You are probably better in this field with sourcing than I am. --Mdann52talk to me! 16:21, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll take a look if I can a little later, but I can't make a promise that it will be within the bounds of this review. Themeparkgc  Talk  00:34, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Something else that I want to point out that the reviewer didn't is that the Statistic section needs to be completely rewritten into a paragraph from. I suggest following the format of several other GA articles about roller coasters.--Dom497 (talk) 19:55, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Ending On Hold

I think that placing the article on hold has worked out for the best, as it has allowed other editors to point out issues that I missed out, and as trivial as they were, it is important they were fixed for a good article. There are still a few niggles remaining, but I feel its important to remember that this is a GA nomination, not a FA nomination and while its still a way from being a Featured article, the issues as I had have been fixed, along with most of those raised by other editors. I therefore feel the article is ready to be granted Good Article status. Oddbodz - (Talk) (Contribs) 23:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)