Talk:Titanic/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Kyteto (talk) 14:57, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I find the article to be lacking of quality at this time, and not up to the level that it should be heavily reviewed at GA level at this point, that can wait until the noticable flaws have been resolved. The referencing is all over the place, there are dozens of statements and specification facts within the first two paragraphs of Construction and this is typical for Features and the sections that follow it. These are easy to identify, and I'll focus my comments on the referencing, which should be resolved prior to its next nomination.

Referencing

• Many non-RS (See WP:RS) sources are being used in this article. Sources that aren't reliable are no good for adding reliability or verifiability to statements, there's no point to using them at all. The existence of many for all intensive purposes means this shouldn't be a GA-class article.

• There are numerous references, I'd say at least 1/8 to 1/4, that aren't correctly formatted. References should have a title, a publisher, and a date listed. In the case of internet sources, adding the url is obviously benifitial as well, and access dates can be used in the place of the date it was written upon if that is not stated. That is the basic minimum the references should all have.

• There are paragraphs without any reference to them at all. There should be at least one reference for each paragraph, but any fact that is likely to be challenged or less than obvious should be cited. Subsections such as the first paragraph of Insufficient lifeboats, Nature of Ice, first para of SS Californian inquiry, Comparisons with the Olympic are all flagging to me as problematic, in need of additional citations to prove their case.

Due to these flaws, I do not believe that the extent to which the references need reworking and adding to can be accomplished within seven days, and am thus failing this article; however I look forward to these issues being resolved and the article being improved upon from its state today. Kyteto (talk) 14:57, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Titanic is undoubtedly one of the more difficult subjects for Wikipedia inclusion. (or indeed for any encyclopedia.) It isn't necessarily the fault of editors or contributors that the article is imperfect. The original public inquiries and related investigations were flawed. Key events that occurred aboard the Titanic are imperfectly known - not least because key personnel didn't survive. That's largely why there has been a century of published speculation.

Perhaps the question is, should the Titanic article be excluded entirely, because it cannot meet all the criteria or, is there an acceptable format which allows for probabilities - rather than absolute certainties? Norloch (talk) 23:06, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

The GA programme is design to highlight articles by awarding them a raised status for meeting certain quality measures. If they fail to meet these measures, they simply do not get the status when appealed for. It is is a priveledge, and not a necessity, if it is to pass it would have to meet the criteria laid out. Some of the things I have asked for aren't advanced social issues or difficulties inherent in the subject, they are simply editors being lazy and not coding things properly, and it is certainly not too much to ask for an article to not have raw URLs poking out.

You seem to be posing the question of what is true, which is important, but more important is what is verifiable. An encyclopedia collects the important and noted views and opinions on an issue such as the Titanic; they don't have to be proven fact if they're not being presented as, they simply have to be verified as having been the existing views of experts and noteworthy institutions as opposed to being made up by a kid who wondered on here and thought it'd be a laugh to screw around with the article. Hence things that aren't THE truth, but are factual, substanciated opinion and theory of importance, are noted; and I have not argued against that, only that the data is sourced so we know where it came from originally. We do that, with citation. Kyteto (talk) 02:59, 26 November 2010 (UTC)