Talk:Social loafing/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: MartinPoulter (talk) 21:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC) I have made minor edits to this article before but do not consider myself a significant contributor.

I think the text is very good but the structure is confusing and there are sentences which need to be rephrased for Wikipedia's general audience. I'll make some changes and then give a more detailed review. This is a quality piece of work, and the language is often admirably clear, but for a GA review I necessarily have to focus on ways the article can be improved.

"One weakness in the research of Ringelmann was that the research could not distinguish between effort from coordination effects." This needs spelling out. "Coordination effects" have not been defined. Make it so that someone completely new to the topic of psychology can understand it. (P.S. Co-ordination is mentioned in the lede, so I'm being a bit pedantic here, but the word "co-ordination" is being used in a technical sense which will be unfamiliar to general readers, so it's worth having a few extra words to spell this meaning out MartinPoulter (talk) 09:52, 9 May 2011 (UTC))

"In a 1993 meta-analysis study by Karau and Williams, they propose the Collective Effort Model (CEM), which is used to generate predictions for the meta-analysis that is subsequently conducted.[3] The CEM integrates expectancy theories with theories of group-level social comparison and social identity to account for studies that examine individual effort in collective settings. From a psychological state, it proposes that Expectancy multiplied by Instrumentality multiplied by Valence of Outcome produces the resulting Motivational Force." - a confusing paragraph. What is the first sentence trying to say? What are expectancy theories? They haven't been defined. How can you "multiply by" a valence, or by instrumentality? Are they measurable quantities? Is there an equation that needs to be spelled out? The next paragraph is better, but could perhaps be simplified.

"meta-analysis study" seems redundant. Why not just "meta-analysis"? Also, meta-analysis of what: how many studies were used?

The "student interactions..." and "Encouraging contributions..." sections look like they address the mitigation of social loafing, and so belong in the final section. I've been bold and moved them myself. Still open to other ways of structuring the article.

Black Hawk shootdown incident: does the Snook reference explicitly use the term "social loafing", or is the connection of the incident to this article a piece of original research? Page numbers for where he invokes a social loafing explanation would be welcome. I've confirmed that Snook does use the social loafing term and cite the Latane paper.

MartinPoulter (talk) 21:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

The changingminds.org reference: I like the Changing Minds site, but blogs aren't suitable sources for Wikipedia because anyone can publish anything on a blog. Find the research that the blog is summarising and cite that instead. Removed the ref, since it didn't match up with preceding sentence.

There seems to be a lot of further reading. Some of these readings are already mentioned in the references: are they all recommended further reading? Been bold and trimmed it myself.

More details of the Blackburn ref (ISBN, page number) would be welcome but are not essential: would be good to make it easy for other people to check this text themselves. I replaced this with another ref.

Social facilitation needs a mention in the body text, not just as a see also link. We could do with a couple of sentences to distinguish when facilitation occurs rather than loafing.

Is the Kraut and Resnick ref definitely about social loafing? I can see how it's related, but the connection of that section to the topic of the article isn't clear from the start.

I'll be away from the computer for a couple of days after this. MartinPoulter (talk) 23:04, 6 May 2011 (UTC) Aaaand I'm back. MartinPoulter (talk) 09:33, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

What's the status on this review? Been a while since any comments. If the original review notes haven't been addressed by now the article should probably be failed. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 15:47, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it seems the educational project which led to the article overhaul has finished, and the student authors aren't around to follow it up. In light of the way a central source (Karau and Williams) is poorly explained and summarised, I can't in all conscience call it a GA, but it's very near and with another chunk of work it could be a GA in future. MartinPoulter (talk) 10:08, 13 June 2011 (UTC)