Talk:Scientology in Germany/GA3

GA Reassessment

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GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   Prose is mainly clear and adequate, though tends to be choppy.

   B. MoS compliance:

   Expand lead

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:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

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:

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

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Starting an individual Good article reassessment to assess if this article meets criteria 4 - "Fair representation without bias" using Wikipedia:Neutral point of view as the appropriate policy guideline. SilkTork *^YES! 10:31, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Initial comments

• Prose: The writing is mainly clear and adequate, though tends to be choppy, with a tendency to use a series of short sentences which disrupts the reading flow. There are places where the meaning or intention is not always clear: "Between 1996 and 1998, government publications on Scientology proliferated" - there is an intention here to say something meaningful, though it's not clear what that is. The sentence is followed by "Courts published those not to interfere with religious freedom, but to undertake the government's responsibility to keep the public informed." Which appears to be an explanation of the previous sentence, but it is awkwardly constructed. Looking at the original source (which is available on Google Books, and it would be useful to all readers to link directly to the online text where possible - currently the cites are not active), it appears there is a long explanation related to why the government published warnings against religious sects in general, though this explanation has not been fully carried over into the article. In the previous paragraph there is this sentence: "Federal ministries and state governments were asked to use all legal means at their disposal to check the activities of Scientology." which it now appears, having consulted the original source, to be related to the sentences above, even though in a new paragraph. Possible wording: "Warnings from sects experts about the influence of religious sects gained media attention which put political pressure on the government to deal with the situation; as the sects were not doing anything illegal, the government resorted to issuing a range of leaflets and public statements giving general warnings about religious sects. The first publications were in 1979, with the number increasing between 1996 and 1998; and a number of these publications mentioned the Church of Scientology." SilkTork *^YES! 11:00, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

• MoS: The lead section needs expanding. See WP:Lead. As the article contents may change during this GAR, the lead can be left to the end, or built up and developed at the same time as working on the rest of the article. SilkTork *^YES! 11:00, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

• Images. Images are legal. The captions are sometimes too long. See WP:Captions. The images are size-forced, these should be returned to default size or a clear rationale given. See WP:IMGSIZE. SilkTork *^YES! 11:00, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

• Stable: Given that there have been reverts on this article, and it has been the subject of dispute resolution, I would expect to see no edit wars on the article itself during this GAR. Scientology related articles are subject to restrictions imposed by Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Scientology. I would hope that good faith editors will move this article forward boldly, and not be intimidated by the ArbCom restrictions which are intended to prevent disruption rather than bold constructive editing. However, other than to remove vandalism, an intention to revert should be first discussed on the talkpage and not proceeded with until a consensus has been reached. I would not count a development or amendment of someone's edit to be a revert. A revert is a complete undoing of an edit. SilkTork *^YES! 11:00, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

• Neutral. There is a neutrality tag on the article, and a key focus of this GAR will be to look into WP:NPOV issues. SilkTork *^YES! 11:00, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

• Captions shortened, image size set to thumb; portrait-format images size-forced using upright parameter, as they otherwise would visually overwhelm the other images. --JN466 17:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
• Gov't publications: I have dropped something along the lines of what you proposed above into the article, but have split it into two halves, with each half appearing at the appropriate point in the timeline. Pls review. --JN466 17:58, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
• Google books links: if we add such links, I'd recommend adding them in the References section, rather than the footnotes, as the footnotes use the short ref format and are wikilinked to the corresponding entries in the References section. (Personally, I have a monobook set-up whereby clicking on the ISBN number automatically takes me to google books, but of course most users don't.) --JN466 18:06, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
• Thanks for the image crop. That image always bothered me, but I never thought of cropping it. --JN466 18:14, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
• The lead used to look like this a couple of months ago (longer sentences). Do you prefer that style? --JN466 18:18, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Apologies

Sorry for delay in dealing with this, I have been busy off-Wiki, and when I do log in my attention is caught elsewhere. I will get around to looking at this in more detail shortly. SilkTork *^YES! 09:49, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Closing

The perspective bias present in the article does need attending to, and some of the wording moved to a more neutral stance, and the sources carefully checked; however, that should be part of the general trend toward cleaning up Wikipedia rather than an excessive examination of this one article. I have removed the NPOV tag as I feel that the dispute regarding this article's status has been given plenty of attention, and the concerns seriously looked at. The arguments for the bias are too subtle and complex to keep up with, and more than can be reasonably expected of the average individual. The article makes a decent attempt to show both sides of the issue, and if there is some bias present in the selection of sources, the interpretation of those sources, and the wording of the material, it is not greater or lesser than to be found in many other articles. I understand the reasoning behind the questioning of the neutrality of this article - that it may paint an inappropriate picture of German attitudes - though it would take a subtle reading of the article (and the sources) and then a long, detailed argument to persuade someone that the article is biased. To be fair, such treatment can be applied to most articles, and they will be found to be biased in some form. While I applaud the desire to ensure absolute neutrality, such an absolute condition can not reasonably be found in life - while we should always strive toward it, we must be aware that WP:Perspective bias is part of the construction of every article, and that it is a general fault of the project as a whole rather than this particular article. In particular, if the main sources - the majority of the reliable sources - are biased in a particular direction, then an article needs to follow that bias rather than correct it. An article which takes a different stance to the main sources (even if that stance is "correct" either according to a minority viewpoint or logical deduction by the editor(s)) would be falling foul of WP:Undue weight and WP:Original research. An article which pays attention to alternative views (which this article does) is doing the right thing.

I mentioned at the start a few areas where the article might not be meeting GA criteria, and some of those have been attended, and others can be developed a bit further - however, the concerns that remain are not enough to warrant delisting, therefore I am closing this review. SilkTork *^YES! 09:32, 25 June 2010 (UTC)