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Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Sphinx Head/1

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Sphinx Head

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Result: No action. Gosgood has kindly offered to provide a proper review of the article. Geometry guy 17:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Disputed quick-fail; listed here following objections raised at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations. Below is a copy/paste of the post there. EyeSerenetalk 16:52, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If the Good Article nomination and evaluation process is to be taken at all seriously in the larger community, then, as a first step, it should conduct its affairs in a consistent, orderly way; in the absence of such then one cannot conclude anything about this project other than that if fills up talk pages in a rather noisy way, for an irregularly conducted process cannot be evaluated by any metric whatsoever and it becomes unclear if the program is capable of distinguishing good articles from the run of the mill.

Noble Story removed Sphinx Head from nomination (see reference) because it is list-like, rather than prose like, in much of its composition.

  1. However, I see no quick fail criteria permitting a summary failure of a list-like article.
  2. Furthermore, in relation to published quick-fail criteria, Sphinx Head: appears to pass. It is not:
    1. completely lacking in reliable sources. A bit of measured reflection leads me to question the use of one reference, but that is a measured reflection. A quick glance of the article finds many citations in play from a number of references
    2. treat it's topic in a non-neutral way. Again, measured reflection may lead some editors to conclude that it deals with the topic in a sympathetic way, but that is not immediately obvious to this editor; it is a conclusion that follows only after some contemplation
    3. have any cleanup banners
    4. have an ongoing edit war, or
    5. cover a rapidly unfolding event with a definite terminating condition in the offing.
  3. I'm aware that the article has a rather large, embedded list. Indeed, I've opined that it make the article read rather like a telephone directory. I'm also aware that the good article criteria has a clause excluding lists, portals and images from nomination. However:
    1. the exclusionary language has not actually been incorporated into the quick fail criteria. Perhaps it should be, but that is another discussion for another place. In any event, it is not the business of reviewers to add quick fail criteria on the fly. That is a matter of deliberation and consensus.
    2. for sake of argument, even if there were a sixth quick-fail criterion barring list-like composition, I would argue that the article could not be quickly failed on that point. It does start off with a decent bit of prose that is sufficiently developed to consider the article a prose piece, at least in part. Since this can be argued, and since I'm obliged to assume good faith regarding the nominators, I can only conclude that the nominators had read the exclusionary language but concluded that their article was more prose- than list-like.
  4. Finally, small points perhaps, but necessary to note: Noble Story did not sign his action statement on the talk page, nor did he perform any action with the {{GAN}} template, leaving the talk page out of sync with the Good Article nomination page. One gets the impression that the editor was working in haste and was growing a tad careless.

Since:

  1. the article has been nominated in good faith, and
  2. appears not to violate any of the five published quick-fail criteria

the only fair and equitable step to take is to reinstate the nomination and subject it to a standard nomination evaluation. Sadly, professional matters will draw me from Wikipedia for the balance of the day, but, in the absence of a compelling argument to the contrary I plan to reinstate the article to the nomination list, and possibly even review the article, though such effort will in the wee (UTC-4) hours of tomorrow morning at the earliest. I or another reviewer may conclude in the context of a nomination evaluation that the article is too list-like in its composition, failing 1(b); it is out of process to simply pull the article from the nomination list, denying review, as if there was a quick-fail criterion barring such articles.

I confess sadness at subjecting Noble Story to this sharp rebuke. Noble Story has been rightfully commended for the number and quality of his or her reviews and I admire the bits that I've seen of them. If this had been the work of a new or inexperienced reviewer I would have contained my remarks to the reviewer's talk page. Alas, this is one of our good practitioners, one that I admire, and one that I hold to higher standards. I hope that Noble Story continues to review with the care and thoroughness that he or she has demonstrated in the past. For the present case, I trust that the Back Log Demon has led Noble Story to a temporary lapse — a good faith effort to quicky remove 'obvious fails' from the nomination list. Be that as it may, I hope that I've made abundantly clear that even so-called 'obvious fails' have a right to be evaluated in accordance with the published process and only through the published process. I need not remind editors who have observed the various and sundry debates concerning the Good Article marque that there are those who hold the project in deep and profound contempt. Let us not hand that community a verifiable basis for their contempt. Yes, there is a backlog. To those alarmed by such, don't panic. If the Good Article nomination and evaluation process can be demonstrated to be erratic in its application, then there arises a proper and justifiable basis to shut the project down. That, of course, would neatly deal with the back log in a very short order. Take care. Gosgood (talk) 16:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I did act somewhat hastily in removing it, having fallen to that demon, and afterwards I didn't update the templates or sign (a double cardinal sin). So, please, accept my full apologies.
To make up for the errors of my ways, if you want to take it back to GAN, I will offer to bring my full reviewing power into force, and (hopefully) give you a lot better review than I did the first time. thank you for your patience, Noble Story (talk • contributions) 00:53, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I'd like to see "quick-failing" deprecated, and this case illustrates why. Failing an article without giving a review is already discouraged, and rightly so. Every article should have a review. The further the article is away from meeting the criteria, the less detailed the review needs to be, but a review there should be nonetheless.
Concerning this case, there is very little that GAR can do about a disputed quick-fail, other than recommend renomination (which nominators are free to do anyway): about the only thing is to endorse reinserting the article in its original place on the list rather than adding it at the bottom, but that is unlikely to be opposed anyway. Since the reviewer agrees with this course of action, this GAR can be closed.
However, I personally would not recommend renominating it until reliable secondary sources can be found. At the moment, apart from a couple of references to the New York Times for historical facts, the entire article is sourced to self-published Cornell University material, which is hardly independent of the subject. This is fine for basic factual information, but is no good for supporting assertions like "reserved for the most respected" and "retained an aura of mystery", even if these are given as quotations: at the very least they should be presented as opinions, but it would be better to source analysis of the society to a secondary source. Geometry guy 07:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. You may accuse me of splitting hairs, but I was not 'disputing a quick-fail'; I was protesting this article's removal from the nomination queue in what to me seemed to be an arbitrary fashion and became alarmed because it is through such arbitrary actions that the Good Article program has earned its strongest criticism. I did not envision this article becoming a Good article review topic. Now that it is here, here is what I propose: rather than re-enqueue this on the nominating page, I'm inclined to pull together the various remarks that have been made about this article, map them to the criteria, and constitute the results as the talk sub-page that supports the Good Article evaluation. Critical observations include the article's essentially list-like character, its grounding on a narrow range of references, and misconstuing a 79 year old New York Times reference as a present-day endorsement by that newspaper. There may be other issues as well, but these are, to my mind, sufficiently documented to establish a fail state. All that remains is to enumerate these observations along with suggestions and present them to the editors as a belated Good Article evaluation. I concur that quick-fail criteria should be deprecated: what began as an advisory has become a parallel process and a bane to those of us who champion uniform procedures. Further remarks on that topic are best placed on the talk page of review process discussion, I suppose, but first, I must walk the dog. Take care. Gosgood (talk) 09:30, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've apparently misread Gosgood's original comments, and listed this article here unnecessarily, for which I apologise; I read the post as a dispute over the review outcome. However, no-one seems to be arguing with the GA fail, just the manner of it. I have no objection to Gosgood's suggestion above, and if we're all happy for him or NS to expand on the existing assessment, then yes, we should close this GAR. On a related point, the discussion on the Reform page linked above has moved towards a proposal that will ensure every article gets a full review, and will indeed deprecate both quick passes and fails. EyeSerenetalk 10:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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