Talk:Wedding industry in the United States/GA1

GA Review

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Commencing review

I will be reviewing this article. This article covers a range of aspects of weddings, however it also has quite a list of significant problems. It appears that this may have been prepared in the context of some type of assignment so, while I might have normally considered quickfailing this, I will try and outline the main issues and place the article on hold.

• Process: a minor point - the full procedure for nominating a GA wasn't followed, with the nomination template not being added to the talk page. I have rectified this.
• Article name: this appears to be essentially an article about weddings in the United States. It is not strictly about the industry, nor is it a worldwide view of the subject. I have template tagged it for this problem.
• Current templates tagging it for issues: the article is tagged as lacking citations in a section, and lacking categories - these kinds of tags would normally rule it out for progressing to GA status. In addition, it is tagged as currently being revamped or expanded. A GA article would normally be stable, and would not come to GAN with an expansion tag.
• Major issues with references. There is a wide range of issues with the sources:

• Some sections lack sources to support the text altogether
• Some references contain so little information it is impossible to know to what they refer. For example "The Wedding Report". No reader will have any idea to what that refers.
• Some sources are not reliable. See WP:RS There are academic books, reliable popular books, journal articles etc etc about weddings and the sector. These would all be reliable. By contrast, for example, it would not be advisable to rely on the webpage of a wedding planner for information about weddings or the industry. They may have a conflict of interest in presenting information objectively, and their sites are unlikely to be in any way peer reviewed or testable.
• The references in the article are not adequately formatted. See WP:CITE#HOW.

• Significant issues with scope and coverage of the article.

• If this article is about the industry, then it should begin with an introduction to the industry. It needs to include:

• What is being defined as part of the industry?
• Value of industry, number of employees
• Examples of major firms

• There should be a history section. For example, when were non-church businesses first involved in weddings? What were those first industries? What is the relationship between the emergence of civil ceremonies and the industry? When did such ceremonies become possible? Are there any records of who or where the first professional celebrant was (in the US at any rate)? etc
• Structure of the industry should be summarised. Venues, celebrants etc, and whether these tend to be vertically integrated businesses, franchises, sole traders or whatever.
• While there is material missing, there also appears to be material included that doesn't belong in an article on the industry. There seems to be cultural information, for example, on bachelor/ette parties and receptions that is not relevant to this article, but might belong elsewhere on Wikipedia.

• The article lacks 'see also' or 'main article' tags to take the reader to some of the significant number of other wedding-related pages on WP. These could include wedding (itself an article with significant problems, especially with referencing), Bachelor party and honeymoon, to name a few.
• Image issue: the tropical beach scene portrayed in the honeymoon section appears to be a potential copyright violation and has already been tagged for possible deletion. Editors need to consider Wikipedia:Image use policy etc.
• Unencyclopedic language. For example "...the cameras follow these seemingly normal brides as they turn into raving monsters during the planning..." This material is not in any case relevant to this article, but if it was, it would need to be revised to be neutral and factual for the purpose of an encyclopedia.

This summarises some key issues. I will drop in over coming days and see how things are developing. hamiltonstone (talk) 04:12, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Closing review

Thank you for addressing some issues. The article has been appropriately renamed, and some language has been improved. However, the references are still poor, and poorly formatted, there is still content included not relevant to the subject, while there is still significant content missing that needs to be covered. The article is a long way from reaching GA status. Thank you for contributing to wikipedia. hamiltonstone (talk) 05:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)