Talk:Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Frickeg (talk · contribs) 03:52, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
I did a very basic copyedit to fix some punctuation issues, but the style overall needs some serious work. The lead is barely adequate; I'd strongly suggest splitting it into two separate paragraphs, one dealing with history and one with ideology and politics. The whole article could use some close editing and rewriting as there is frequent repetition of similar phrases (e.g. in the lead, repetition of "agreement" in the paragraph about Sunningdale; this is not an isolated occurrence). Also beware of very short paragraphs - there are a lot of these, especially in the "Policies" section. Some may be suitable for merging, but a better idea is often to expand the coverage on these particular issues as many of them are very bald statements of fact.

Some of the headings are a little odd too. Should "Extra-Parliamentary activity" ("Parliamentary probably shouldn't be capitalised) really be subordinate to "policies"? I also wonder about "Prominent UUP members ..." - is this not a little POV to give it this much prominence? Either way these could be either integrated into the main article where they are of sufficient note, or otherwise omitted (they are presumably noted on those politicians' pages, and I can't see an assertion of notability with regards to Vanguard itself).

I also feel the article could benefit from some significant restructuring, on which I will go into more detail under criterion #3 below.

A number of the points from the original GA review still stand, including "bellicose pronouncements" (POV?).
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
To begin with, the references are in desperate need of standardising with the citation templates; they aren't consistent with each other and most of them do not give the full information required of references (see WP:CITEHOW). At the very least they need dates and publishers. (This is a contributing factor to the immediate impression about sources that they are predominantly internet-based, when several are in fact from Google books.)
There are also some significant lapses in citing sources. I have made a basic (though not comprehensive) list of statements and issues that need citation:
Second paragraph in "Origins" contains no citations. (Maybe one of the previously cited references covers these?)

The first paragraph under "Electoral performances". Needs cites for alliances and "loyalist coalition" (and the first GA review's point about double linking of the DUP still stands here).

Most of the specific councillors listed need citations from one or more of the sources being discussed.

Final paragraph of "Electoral performances" is without citation.

Second paragraph under "Split" is without citation.
I note your reply to the previous reviewer regarding the difficulty in finding sources. However, a basic search of Google books includes quite a few potentially useful sources with previews. I encourage you to contact some editors in Ireland in search of more sources, since the reliance on internet sources (and the odd fact that hardly any of them are referred to more than once) remains a problem. (Not one that would necessarily prevent it passing GA, though; the main problems under this criteria have to do with reference formatting.)
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
I find this by far the largest problem with the article, and would urge a comprehensive restructuring to address it. Basically there are periods of history that are both confused and difficult to locate, which would be greatly alleviated by a general "history" section (perhaps with subheadings for the "Origins", "Split", "Decline", etc.). As an example of some of the omissions I find troubling: the electoral performance section shows that the party had a significant presence in the NI Assembly and a smaller one at Westminster, but there is very little account of that (and no mention of any of these politicians, apart from Craig), in contrast to the slightly bewildering detail about councillors below. After going into such detail about local councils it is casually mentioned that the party outpolled the DUP in several elections - with no further details. I find this characteristic throughout the article.

I am not sure whether "Ideology" and "Policies" both need separate headings, but they do need some reworking (I would suggest that they form the second of two major areas in any restructuring, probably coming after the history section). The Ideology section in particular has some NPOV problems (see below). Either way the policies section gives a lot of very specific statements but not much of an idea of the actual broader policies or goals of Vanguard. (Did they ever publish an election manifesto or something similar? This could be extremely useful in this regard.) I know that NI politics were and are very often focused entirely on the sectarian divide (especially in this period), but were there no policies whatsoever outside this issue? Also it would be very helpful to state how Vanguard's policies differed from the UUP and the DUP.
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
I don't for a moment accuse you of actively trying to push a certain POV, but this does stem a little from the sources you've chosen. The "Ideology" section is a particular offender - the entire section is pretty much composed of accusations and descriptions from Vanguard's opponents. I realise this is difficult with parties perceived as "extreme", but that section badly needs a Vanguard perspective, and this holds true throughout the article. The criticisms all have a place in the article since clearly they were a big part of the public perception of the party, but they are at present unbalanced by any Vanguard viewpoints; I very much doubt the party itself identified as fascist or neo-Nazi.
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
The image in the infobox needs a caption noting that it is a reproduction of the actual logo. Is there a way to get the actual logo under fair use? In addition, I wonder if there are any more relevant images available? The article could certainly benefit from them, although I'm passing these criteria since I know that any from this period may be problematic with regards to copyright.
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

This is an interesting article and there's a decent amount of information included. However, there are significant problems with style, referencing, coverage and NPOV that are likely to take longer than a week to address, and for this reason I am failing the article for now. There are also a number of points from the first GA review in May 2008 that have not been addressed.

The article as a whole needs a very thorough copyedit, references need formatting and the reference list could do with both consolidation and expansion - consolidating some of the diverse sources a little (since I'm sure many of them cite similar things; this may be a consequences of duplication of sources, in which case that needs addressing too), and diversifying to include some more secondary texts. Finally and most importantly, the article needs some attention for completeness since it is sometimes quite fragmentary in the history it gives, and idiosyncratic in the attention given to certain events. It needs quite a bit of work, but I hope to see it at GAN again in the future. Frickeg (talk) 05:11, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]