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Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Wyangala/1

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Wyangala

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review
Result: There have been no comments for several weeks, but since a couple of users do not believe that any progress has been made in resolving the issues presented, I think delist is the best option. Challenger.rebecca (talk) 17:01, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

According to this SPI, Fvalzano and JSwho may be technically related. That is a problem because Fvalzano's only real contribution to WP was to heavily edit this article, and JSwho's first (and only major) contrib was to GA review this article. Therefore, the review may have been in bad faith. MSJapan (talk) 13:35, 17 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A further rather superficial review of the article as it relates to the criteria indicates many missing citations, and much citing of sources only at the end of paragraphs, which may mean the paragraphs were lifted verbatim from the sources (which are generally print). There are some flow problems as well, where material is alluded to at the end of one section and then picked up in the next (thus becoming "narrative" instead of encyclopedic." MSJapan (talk) 17:19, 17 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comments below were copied from Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Wyangala GA?
I applaud MSJapan for tracking down sock puppets. However, as much as it pains me to do so, I must remind them that the reason to initiate a GAR is if they have read the article and believe that it does not merit its good article (GA) status according to the GA criteria. It truly has nothing to do with sock puppets. I am absolutely cheering what they've done for this SPI, don't get me wrong, but I must admit that it is possible for sock puppets to follow the GA criteria. If all they can say in this GAR is that the article could have been reviewed by its nominator, as much as other editors despise the sound of that, they will still judge the article solely on the GA criteria. This GAR appears to have been initiated purely for punitive reasons.
From WP:GAR:
  • "The outcome of a reassessment should only depend on whether the article being reassessed meets the good article criteria or not."
  • "The aim is not to delist the article, but to fix it."
It may be true that this article needs fixing. I have done what I needed to do by posting this reminder. Cheers, all. Prhartcom (talk) 17:32, 17 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, a cursory lookover indicates it is missing citations in several places where GA claims they are needed. There's a lot of "paragraph-level" citation that might as well be copied verbatim from the books if it's really only from one page. MSJapan (talk) 17:15, 17 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Did you check to see whether the citations at the end of the paragraph actually covered the full paragraph (as is allowed in the citation rules), or did you simply add "citation needed" tags after particular facts without checking? For that matter, did you check those sources to see how closely paraphrased the article is, instead of assuming it must be? You're as much as saying the article is approaching copyvio, and I'd want examples of the places where at least close paraphrasing exists. If you want me to set up a community reassessment for you—which basically means I'd have to start it myself and put my name on it—I'll need to feel more comfortable with what you believe is wrong with the article. My initial inclination was to support the doing of a reassessment, since the circumstances of the original passage were clearly irregular, but you haven't helped your cause here. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:06, 17 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comments below were moved from Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Wyangala GA?
Sorry, as I said, I'm not realy at all familiar with this process, so I wasn't sure what I had to do myself. As an example, here's the first major paragraph where I found the need for citations.
On 27 May 1815, Deputy Surveyor George William Evans was the first European to discover the headwaters of the Lachlan River, naming it in honour of the NSW Governor, Lachlan Macquarie[citation needed]. Two years later Lieutenant John Oxley, with Evans by his side, explored the Lachlan from its junction with the Belubula River to the Great Cumbung Swamp, a distance of 1,450 km (900 mi). As Oxley progressed down the Lachlan, he had friendly encounters with the Wiradjuri people, noting that the language they spoke was distinctly different from that used by the indigenous population on the coast.[1] By the time Oxley had reached the Cumbung Swamp, he could advance no further due to the presence of 'impassable' marshland, eventually being forced to abandon the journey and to turn back. Oxley believed he had reached a marshy inland sea, concluding that the interior of Australia was 'uninhabitable' and unfit for settlement.[2]
  1. First sentence - The material on Evans wpuld appear to be cited from from source 9, as it is closest. Oxley doesn't refer to Evans as a European. This has been synthesized from elsewhere. This does not appear in the news rticle either.
  2. Oxley refers to the river as the Lachlan River right from the beginning - he never states it was named after the governor. Again, it probably was, but that information isn't from this source. It's also not from the news article.
  3. The 27 May 1815 entry indicates Oxley met a native, not that he discovered something. It's the news article that uses this date, but it must be using a different source.
  4. The "two years later" appears to be three - Oxley's second expedition appears to be 1818, and is Part II of this source. So despite the fact that this is unpaginated, there's a citation issue insofar as we don't even know what part of the book the material is from. There are dated entries, so it would be really easy to do it that way.
  5. A text search in both sources for the 1450 km statistic stated and "Great Cumbung Swamp" returned nothing.
  6. The news article says Evans discovered the Lachlan on May 27, 1815. It then refers back to the April 27 entry, and after that minor historicity, it becomes wholly modern.
This is the first major paragraph in the history. I have no idea where the majority of the material is from, but it's not from the sources cited based on the information given. I'll disassemble the rest of it if need be, but it will take a very long time.
Another shorter ;line earlier I should have tagged, but didn't know how to inline tag OR and SYNTH:
"The name 'Wyangala' (pronounced /ˈwaɪæŋɡɑːlə/)[3] originates from a Wiradjuri word of unknown meaning.[4] However, similar sounding words in the Wiradjuri language indicate it may mean troublesome or bad (wanggun) white (ngalar).[5]
  1. The GNB source for the name is speculative about the name (it uses "said to be"). The article states it as fact.
  2. "The similar sounding words" is entirely OR quite literally taken from an online wordlist.

References

  1. ^ "Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, by John Oxley". University of Adelaide.
  2. ^ "Possibilities of the Lachlan Valley". The Land. Sydney, NSW: National Library of Australia. 25 July 1924. p. 2. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
  3. ^ "Automatic Phonemic Transcriber". Tom Brøndsted.
  4. ^ "Wyangala Dam". Geographical Names Register (GNR) of NSW. Geographical Names Board of New South Wales.
  5. ^ "Sydney Aboriginal Languages and Computing". Human Services, Aboriginal Affairs, NSW.
So there are major sourcing issues within the first three paragraphs of the article. MSJapan (talk) 07:54, 18 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have added OR and clarification tags in accordance with my previous comments, with any other sources I checked, and also to the usage of "European" in the first part of the article. Evans the surveyor was from England, and New South Wales, as part of the eastern part of Australia, was wholly claimed by the British. The British do not, never have (and likely never will) refer to themselves as Europeans. Unless the settlers are clearly coming over from Europe (as the Dutch did), anyone from that area should be presumed to be British or Australian-born British citizens. MSJapan (talk) 07:01, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the tags that have been applied to this article are frankly ridiculous, and whoever applied them was really straining to plaster this article with as many tags as possible. I have no particular stance on whether this article should remain a GA, but I would urge whoever did that tagging to rein their efforts in and delete the sillier ones themselves because it looks pretty questionable from here. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:12, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's because the article is questionable. What I don't understand is why I find a problem, bring it here, and the first person dismisses it, the second claims I didn't do due diligence, and now a third claims that my tagging exactly the due diligence I did here and explained here is "questionable". I've shown that this article meets none of the basic sourcing criteria needed to be a good article within three paragraphs, and I'm sure it's earlier, but I can't access Australian newspapers from the 1920s. When I find OR, SYNTH, and outright made-up stuff, of course it's going to look silly. Blame the SPA who wrote the article and his sock who passed the GA for the questionability of the article, not me. The questionability here is why this isn't immediately being delisted. MSJapan (talk) 16:12, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
MSJapan, as it is stated at WP:GAR, we raise issues here because we have a motivation to to improve the articles we report and personally see them through to GA. We are not here with a motivation to delist articles because we have reason to punish the editors of those articles. GAR is not a natural extension of SPI. I hope this explanation was helpful to you. Prhartcom (talk) 16:39, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) A community reasseessment is a deliberative process, and is only closed by an uninvolved editor when the community has had a chance to review the article, and to give interested parties—authors, previous reviewers, and members of the associated WikiProject(s)—the opportunity to do remediation. I've only just done the notification of the interested parties, so we need to give them their chance. The delisting will have to wait. The primary author, Fvalzano, when notified of this reassessment, wrote I would if I could, but I have no time right now :( good luck with it, so we shouldn't expect or wait for any edits to address issues raised from that quarter. I frankly think it's up to the WikiProject: if they take on improving the article to bring it up to GA standard, then it might stand a chance. If no editors decide to start the extensive needed work on the article in the next week or so, then based on your findings, I think delisting will be the final result here. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:45, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
MAJapan: you certainly can access Australian newspapers from the 1920s, considering that they're all digitised, searchable, and even show up in Google results. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:33, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Drover's Wife, it is not up to MSJapan to do the (apparently extensive) work to fix the identified problems with the article. At this point, with the primary editor of the article, Fvalsano, having said that no fixes will be forthcoming from that quarter, it's up to someone or several someones to take responsibility for addressing the many issues raised so far, and the ones likely to be found in the rest of the article, which has not yet been examined. The likeliest source of people with the interest in doing the edits are members of the associated WikiProject; if you're one of them, then perhaps you can let us know whether you think it's going to happen. If no one has been found to make the needed improvements by the end of the month, I don't see that there would be any alternative but to delist. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:09, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist: unfortunately, no one has stepped forward to edit the article, and the issues MSJapan has noted are germane and sufficient that the article does not currently qualify as a Good Article. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:23, 1 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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