Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Golden State Killer/1

Golden State Killer

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delist Consensus this does not meet the Good Article criteria AIRcorn (talk) 08:08, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Passed as a GA by an editor making only their 95th edit. Talk:Golden State Killer/GA1 was brief, to say the least. Although not unprecedented, I'd say it's unusual for an article of this length to pass without any changes being needed, no matter how small.

The article is a strange hybrid of information about an uncaught serial killer, and biography of the suspect. Yes I'm aware he's innocent until proven guilty per WP:BLP, but you have to look at things such as this pre-arrest section which still largely exists at Golden State Killer#Suspect profile and Golden State Killer#Suspects. Removing information about exonerated suspects, redundant lines of inquiry about construction work near 1979 Goleta murder etc. does't violate BLP, it keeps the article up to date and on-topic.

The lead doesn't summarise the article properly. To give just two examples, the claim about Virginia's DNA database being seen as the most effective and that Michelle McNamara coined the term Golden State Killer. While both are true, neither of these appears in the main body of the article.

The book source in footnote #2 is frequently cited without an accompanying page number. Footnote #9 appears to be a television show that is no longer available on the A&E Networks website, therefore unverifiable and needing to be replaced. Footnote #24 is hosted on googlepages and does not appear to be reliable. Footnotes #30, #34 and #38 s a podcast on Soundcloud hosted by "12-26-75". Simillarly Casefile podcast is used repeatedly. I listen to casefile, it's won awards, but it hasn't won them for its reporting and accuracy but for being entertaining. There's nothing in Wikipedia:Reliable sources about podcasts being reliable, although you could easily make a case for the LA Time's "Man In The Window" podcast about the Golden State Killer being reliable for example. Footnotes #36 and #37 are for what appears to be a self-published website about the Visalia Ransacker, the website's contact form makes it clear by the use of "don't hesitate to contact them [law enforcement]" makes it clear the publisher is independent of law enforcement. Why are we citing the opinions of random website creators about whether the Visalia Ransacker case was linked the Golden State Killer, when we should really be citing law enforcement and/or other reliable sources? Footnote #119 is a website titled "The Quester Files" containing all sorts of information about Bigfoot, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, the occult and cold cases. His about page makes lots of grandiose claims such as he is the "controversial and highest profiled independent investigator of the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker. His work as presented on the Q Files and in books has inspired the reopening of cases, national press conferences, and various news reports." Given the many reliable sources covering the case, do we really need to scrape the barrel with sources like this? This shouldn't be considering an exhaustive list of problematic sources, just ones that jumped off the page at me. The whole sourcing needs to be properly checked, and the many self-published ones replaced with more reliable sources. On the subject of sources the table of East Area Rapist attacks at Golden State Killer#East Area Rapist (June 1976–July 1979) contains many entries lacking a citation.

The above shouldn't be taken as a complete list of the problems with the article, hopefully other editors will be able to bring up any issues they see as well. Rising5554 (talk) 12:34, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I too was startled to see this had passed GA. The concerns above are all valid, and here's another: the topic is huge, with many twists and turns and side trips, and even determining whether the article meets crit. 3 ("Broad in its coverage: it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail") would take a substantial amount of work, probably including interaction with the principal editors. E Eng 17:21, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I will also add that I haven't even checked if any of the sentences are accurately sourced by the sources cited. However picking one at random this source is being used to source the sentence "The FBI announced on June 15, 2016, that it was confident that the East Area Rapist murdered the Maggiores". While it is quite possible the FBI did indeed say that at their news conference it isn't covered in this source, the closest it gets is "Investigators believe the rapes and dozens of burglaries that were often used to scout neighborhoods escalated in 1978, when the killer fatally shot U.S. Air Force Sgt. Brian Maggiore and his wife Katie as they walked their dog". It's unclear whether the "investigators" referred to are police or FBI, and there's nothing about them being "confident". Based on this I would suggest the article needs to be carefully scrutinized. Also in the table of East Area Rapist attacks frequently contains sources such as this copy of a Sacramento Bee article. I'm not an expert on US copyright law, but it seems to me to be in violation of WP:COPYLINK? Rising5554 (talk) 19:10, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Another no-no. The review is obviously bogus and the GA status should be withdrawn. E Eng 20:49, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delist It seems very unlikely that, after a reasonably thorough review of an article of this size, a reviewer would find no WP:GACR violations, and not even have any questions, comments, or suggestions. The issues found by Rising5554 above are more than enough to convince me that the reviewer did not exercise sufficient care, or misunderstood the GA criteria or process. This was their first (and so far only) GA review, and as Rising5554 points out, they hadn't made many edits when they did the review, so likely just a case of inexperience rather than acting in bad faith. Pinging the reviewer, @Muttnick: (not to shame them, but just to make them aware of the reassessment, and give them an opportunity to respond - FYI, Rising, I think it's conventional to notify the reviewer and nominator with a {{GARMessage}} template on their talk page). Colin M (talk) 21:07, 2 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]