Talk:River Arun/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Moswento (talk · contribs) 12:11, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll review this one. Initial comments to follow later today. Moswento ^talky 12:11, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Comments

Overall, an excellent article. I have a few comments/questions, which I've noted below. I may add a few additional comments on a second read-through.

Lead

• Things that are in the lead, but not in the article

• "known locally as ghylls or gills" - not sure this needs to be in the lead at all, could be moved to the Route section

•  Agreed Moved to route section.

• the fact that the North River is aka River Oke - also possibly unnecessary in the lead; either way, should be mentioned in Route section

•  Agreed Moved to route section.

• "whose headstreams are the heights of Leith Hill and Holmbury Hill in Surrey." - is this needed in the lead?

•  Agreed Moved to route section.

• "It is one of the faster flowing rivers in England" - worth mentioning in the lead, but also in the Route section?

•  Not done It is mentioned in the Present section, grouped with other data about tide times, headroom, etc.

Oops, sorry for missing that!

• The first paragraph has a lot of sentences beginning with 'It' and 'Its' - I think it would read more smoothly with a bit of variety

•  Done Paragraph reworked.

Much better

• "improved by the addition of flash locks, but they were not very successful." - this sounds odd, for something to be improved by things that were not very successful

•  Done Reworded. The channel was improved, but the locks were difficult to use.

• "the proprietors of the scheme built two major cuts, one to avoid a large bend near Pulborough" - I would use a different punctuation mark other than a comma here - it creates quite a long sentence with lots of clauses

•  Done Sentence split into three, with some rewording.

• "with the coming of the railways" - this phrase is repeated twice in the lead; I would change the second instance as that doesn't read as well

•  Done second instance reworded.

• The citations in the lead don't need to be there if the facts are cited in the article (see also comments above)

•  Done citations removed. I added them originally because they had {citation needed} tags, but the article was much smaller then.

• Lead is otherwise great; a good length, and the second and third paragraphs give a clear overview of the history of the river

History

• First sentence has material copied verbatim from the source - could you rephrase?

•  Done Always a problem when you haven't written that bit.

• I wonder if the sentence "So the Arnus would mean 'the flowing one'." could be removed as possibly redundant?

•  Done Agreed. I have deleted it.

Improvements

• A thought - there are times I feel the text in this section could be slightly more concise. To take the first paragraph as an example, I would cut "near the later railway station", "there" (after "river channel below") and "declared to be". I wouldn't insist on any of those cuts, but it might be worth you reading through the 'Improvements' section again with a "do I need all of these words?" mindset.

•  Partially done I have cut the railway station, and reworded the "declared to be" sentence, as it is important that a decision was taken not to charge tolls, despite the work. I am not convinced about the removal of "there", since it implies that the channel was improved from Ford down to the sea.

• Paragraph 2, sentence 1 - this sentence seems a bit awkward at the moment, because of the "although its". Rephrase?

•  Done I have switched the phrases around, to improve the flow.

Operation

• Paragraph 2, final sentence - currently reads "the benefits were", although there is only really one benefit, the increase in business. List this as the benefit, and the other part as the reason?

•  Done Reworded.

Decline

• Final paragraph, final sentence - was Edward Slaughter still hiring pleasure boats in the 1990s, or a company he had founded?

•  Done It was the company. Clarified.

• Much better. One more minor point - the source says "by 1903", rather than "in 1903". A "began...by 1903" construction would sound odd though, so might need tweaking.

• Tweaked to reflect "by 1903".

Present

• Didn't notice anything here

Route

• Second paragraph, second sentence - a bit awkward, esp. the " and buildings named The Old Wharf on the 1:2500 map to the south of the bridge" - rephrase?

•  Done Sentence reordered and split into two.

• "Soon it is crossed by Orfold Aqueduct, which carried the navigation over it." - not sure what the 'it' refers to?

•  Done "Navigation" changed to "Arun Navigation", and "it" changed to "river channel".

• "the remains of Pallingham Manor on the north bank, and Pallingham Manor Farm..." - is Pallingham Manor Farm also on the north bank? I assume it would be, but could be clearer if so.

•  Done Reworded slightly to clarify.

• "Exploration of the tunnel was described by an article in Sussex County Magazine in 1953, when both ends were accessible, and again in 2012, " - this sentence could possibly do with being shortened or split

•  Done Sentence split

• "built in the medieval tradition" - a bit vague.

•  Done, I think. Mentioned that it looks medieval, although it isn't.

• "grade II listed" - should be "Grade II listed" (likewise for Grade I)

•  Done 4 instances changed.

Points of interest

• No problems here

References

• Generally, I would expect to see the list of cited works after the footnotes, rather than before. Perhaps change for consistency with other articles?

• Debatable. I started putting Bibliography first when the {harvnb} refs tried to scroll the book title to the top of the page when you clicked the short form ref, but failed to do so if there was insufficient text below the book title. They now highlight the book title, so would work the other way round, but it seems more obvious for the references to be a subsection of bibliography. There are at least 200 canal/navigation articles that use this ordering, plus 30 river articles, and numerous others scattered across railways, geography, etc., including quite a few at GA standard. Is it strictly necessary?

No, it's not necessary, the Manual of Style doesn't specify. I hadn't noticed articles with this layout before, but I now see what you mean about other canal/river articles. Happy to strike this.

• It would be good to add more info to FN5 ("The Roman Map of Britain") (title, accessdate, author/publisher)

•  Done

• I'm not sure about eCastles and CastleUK.net being reliable sources (although I'm happy to be corrected on this). Given that they're used only once each, are there any secondary sources they could be replaced with?

•  Done Both replaced with refs from National Historic List for England.

Images

• No problems here

Assessment

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

• Thanks for the review. I think I have now addressed most of the comments. The only one I have queried is the ordering of the bibliography and references. Bob1960evens (talk) 00:16, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the interesting article! I agree with your action on my above comments, and with your in-action on the references section, and I now think this article meets all of the Good Article criteria. Good work! Moswento ^talky 10:43, 24 January 2013 (UTC)