Talk:LGBT rights in Croatia/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 18:28, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

I'll review this. It might take me a few days to complete the review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:28, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

I'll copyedit as I go; please revert as needed if I make mistakes.

• See this tool; there are some dead links.
• The citations in the lead are unnecessary if the information is in the body (and cited there); you don't have to remove them, but many editors prefer to.
• The lead doesn't include any of the information about the history of LGBT rights in Croatia; a sentence or two wouldn't hurt.
• There are quite a few "However"s in the article; these can often be cut. I'll cut them if appropriate if I copyedit before you get to them.
• Just a suggestion, but you might consider getting rid of the first three subheadings in the "History" section. The material flows reasonably well, and the first two sections in particular are short and don't benefit much from the headings.
• There are several uncited sentences -- three in the "Communist era" section, and several more further down, including a couple of paragraphs in the adoption section, and several in the "Public opinion" section.
• The 1980s brought change towards the visibility of LGBT people: a bit clumsy. Do you mean it made LGBT people more visible or that there was a change in attitude to them?
• The first lesbian association (Lila initiative) in Croatia: I'm not clear what this means. Was the "Lila initiative" a lesbian association? If so I think you need to do more than name it without explanation.
• The situation effectively stagnated until the 2000 when... the rest of the sentence doesn't make it clear why the new coalition ended the period of stagnation. The next paragraph talks about this a bit, but makes no mention of whether the change in government was relevant.
• When you mention LIGMA, LORI, and ISKORAK, I think a couple of words indicating what each one is would be good, and a link would be nice too if one is available.

  Still no context for ISKORAK, but the other two are fixed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:14, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

  Struck, just realized you do introduce them earlier in the article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:55, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

• The first paragraph of the "Post-communist era" says that the slowdown in progression was caused by the breakup of Yugoslavia, which siphoned off activists, but then says that the socio-political climate was hostile. Which is it? Or is it both?
• The equalization of the age of consent is an interesting milestone; can we say more about how it happened to include homosexual activity, in a hostile political environment?
• Do any of the sources give information, or even speculation, on what caused the shift in public attitudes that appears to have occurred at the end of the century? Outlawing discrimination surely indicates a less hostile environment. Since you say "return of the centre-left coalition" in 2011 after eight years, presumably that was the coalition in power when the laws were changed?
• More recently, the establishment of a lobby group, "In the Name of the Family", led the call to change the Croatian national constitution: the establishment of the group didn't lead the call; the group itself did (I assume). And I wouldn't use "More recently"; give dates -- this article may be read in ten or twenty years time, and it shouldn't require yearly updates to be readable.
• The NYT article on the referendum mentions that some Gay Pride marchers were beaten in 2002; that seems like it would be worth mentioning in the article, particularly as the writer contrasts it with later marches with no violence.
• There is a close-in-age exemption of three years: what does this mean? I can guess, but I think it needs to be spelled out precisely.
• In 2003, one year after the first LGBT pride in Croatia: presumably this should be "LGBT pride march".
• I think the article is confused as to where to place the historical information. The "Recognition of same-sex relationships" section talks about when the rights were gained, as well as what the rights are. Would it be better to start with the rights themselves, as they stand now, with no reference to the history, and then put the history section at the end? The history is not the primary topic here, after all.
• The change in the law was proposed by the ruling coalition while they were in opposition: a very confusing way to say it. If they're in opposition, don't refer to them as the ruling coalition. If you mean they're in power at the time of writing, that's not a good way to do it since that will change over time.
• the modernisation of the IVF law would be one of its first priorities: as far as I can tell you don't say exactly what this law did, which also makes it hard to tell why some people "wanted lesbian couples to be included in the legal change"; what was it that they did not gain from this law?
• The bullet list of laws is not very useful -- it's not clear when they were passed, or exactly what changes they wrought.

Given that I've suggested you restructure the article somewhat, I'm going to pause there until you have a chance to respond. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:33, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@Hmxhmx: just checking in; are you still working on this? If you are, that's fine; just wanted to touch base. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:38, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: Yes, I'm still working on this. I have a few questions/concernes regarding some points:

• Just a suggestion, but you might consider getting rid of the first three subheadings in the "History" section. The material flows reasonably well, and the first two sections in particular are short and don't benefit much from the headings.

  - I am not sure what the title of the subheading should be after I combine the first three subheadings. Or is there no need for a subheading at all?

  No subheading would be OK, I think; or perhaps "Pre-communist and communist era"? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:11, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

• The equalization of the age of consent is an interesting milestone; can we say more about how it happened to include homosexual activity, in a hostile political environment?

  - I couldn't find any more information on this, just that it was equalized.

  OK, no problem in that case; just thought I'd ask. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:11, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

• I think the article is confused as to where to place the historical information. The "Recognition of same-sex relationships" section talks about when the rights were gained, as well as what the rights are. Would it be better to start with the rights themselves, as they stand now, with no reference to the history, and then put the history section at the end? The history is not the primary topic here, after all.

  - Should I move the historical information from Recognition of same-sex relationships to the appropirate place in the History section? I would then move the History section below LGBT tourism or Public laws. Or do you recommend another place? --Hmxhmx 14:18, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

  Hard to be sure without seeing the result, but I think moving all the historical information to the "History" section is the best approach. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:11, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmxhmx: Just checking in again -- are you still planning on working on this? It's been a week. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:23, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, sorry for the delays. I've been busy for the past couple of weeks with something. --Hmxhmx 17:35, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Mike Christie: I think I went through all of the suggested improvements. Do you have any further suggestions? --Hmxhmx 20:33, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I'll read through again and post more comments shortly. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:18, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Reading through again.

• There's still some historical information in the "Public laws" section, though it's now only recent history. For example, the IVF discussion gives the background prior to 2012. I'm not going to hold up GA for this, but I think it would be much better to compress the public laws section to only state the current situation with minimal reference to how we got there. Consider a reader who is reading the article to find out if they have a right to IVF; they want to see "Same-sex couples have the right to..." or something like that. They don't care how it got that way. As I said, this is OK for GA, but fixing it would improve the article. Similarly, much of the "Anti-Discrimination Laws" section should be in "History".
• The list of laws under "Anti-Discrimination Laws" isn't very useful. Is this just a list of laws that include an LGBT-related antidiscrimination component? Without some information about exactly what each law did I don't think the reader gets much of value from this list.
• There's an uncited sentence in the "Pre-communist and communist era" section, and more in the "Post-communist era" section.
• The "Public opinion" section is just a long list of opinion poll results. There's no way for a reader to get an overall sense of public opinion in Croatia other than by reading every line of this and mentally summing it up. We should do that work for them; we can't make summary statements such as "all polls" or "most polls" say unless we have confidence that we're looking at almost all the polls, but we should be giving this information at least partly in narrative form. Are some of these polls more significant than others? Do some of them show trends over time? Is there any commentary in the sources on how public opinion has changed? The section needs to be rewritten to narrate the information for the reader. You can include one or more tables, and a short bullet list of some key information is OK, but currently this section is not prose, it's just a list.
• The 2013 event was the biggest one so far: if this is still true, add "As of 2018" so the reader knows it has not gone out of date.
• The "Split Pride" section makes me curious about the media; the article gives no information on media that were or are opposed to LGBT rights. Is this an accurate reflection of the state of affairs? Have no major media channels come out with editorial positions in opposition to LGBT rights? All the opposition quotes in the article are given in terms of individual statements, or else political parties or the church. Has the media really been uniformly supportive?
• I would move the note on the Rijeka march up to the Split Pride section, since that's what it relates to, and then combine the two Zagreb marches into a single paragraph. As it stands it reads like a list rather than prose.
• I think you should remove names from the list in the third paragraph of "Proponents of LGBT rights" that are not blue-linked and have no context. There's no point mentioning Drago Pilsel if there's no way to know who he is. It's a long list, and it should be kept to significant names.
• Why is E.N.I. mentioned in the "Politics" section?
• and subsequently voted "homophobe of the year" in 2010: who voted for this? Is the source for this independent of the people who voted for it? If not, we shouldn't include it.
• their support for the authorities in preventing and sanctioning behavior endangering equality and fundamental rights and freedoms of Croatian citizens effectively and responsibly: I can't figure out what this means; can you rephrase it?
• How about moving the summary table at the end up to the end of the first section, "Public laws"?
• There are still some dead links with no archive links. Footnotes 5, 21, 43, 70, 71, 79, 80, 90, 102, 103, 109, and 111. Most of these are CroL.hr links.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:50, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I couldn't find an archived version of reference #21, but I fixed the other ones. --Hmxhmx 16:23, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Hmxhmx: are you still planning on working on this? Let me know. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:07, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I'm working on it on a separate page and will apply the changes periodically.--Hmxhmx 17:13, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

OK, just checking; no problem. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:01, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Hmxhmx: This review has been open for nearly eight weeks. Unless you think you can complete the changes above in the next few days, I think it would be better to fail this and work on improving the article outside the GA process, which is meant to review articles, not primarily for improvement work. I'd be happy to re-review it for GA once the work is complete. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:57, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

I am okay with that, I'm not sure if I'll be able to complete it within the next few days. --Hmxhmx 11:14, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

OK, I'll go ahead and fail it. If you'd like my input as you work on the article, just let me know and I'll try to help. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:19, 18 February 2018 (UTC)