Talk:Quadratic equation/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Cedars (talk · contribs) 01:11, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi,

Unfortunately I do not believe this article is at a stage where it meets the Good Article criteria. The principle problem is the article structure. As with many articles the article needs to cover many different aspects of the subject, this makes proper organisation of the content very important. Specific problems that prevent this from becoming a good article include:

1. The lead has non-standard formatting and punctuation. In particular:
   1. The word "general" may be redundant.
   2. "form" should be followed by a full-colon.
   3. The choice to have a miniaturized note breaking the lead is non-standard.
   4. If you are going to include it, it may advisable not to bracket the part that states 'if a=0 the equation is linear not quadratic'.
   5. If the lead is going to suggest to quadratic equations are, by definition, univariate then a source needs to be cited as Google suggests multivariate quadratic equations (e.g. of the form ax^2+bx+dy^2+ey=c) are not unheard of.
2. Following the lead, the article jumps straight into solutions without much added context. Some of the sub-sections of this section could be written in a more concise form. The article then returns to various solutions in the "Advanced Topics" section.
3. The article has a "[citation needed]" tag that has not been addressed in the "History" section.
4. The "Advanced Topics" section seems to be a catch-all section and could benefit from better organisation.
5. There may be a missed opportunity to combine discussion of "Avoiding loss of significance" and "Floating-point implementation".
6. The article could benefit from more prominent placement of the quadratic formula as, rightly or wrongly, it is probably what many readers will be searching for when they come to the article.

Cedars (talk) 01:11, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I didn't nominate thinking that it would pass. I mostly wanted to get a set of eyes to look it over and to give a summary of what they thought needed improvement. Thanks very much, you gave me precisely what I was looking for! Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 04:10, 27 April 2013 (UTC)