Talk:W. G. Grace/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ivar the Boneful (talk · contribs) 15:33, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Failed "good article" nomination

This article has failed its Good article nomination. This is how the article, as of August 19, 2017, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: The article is a bit of a mess structurally, particularly the sections about his cricket career (the lede and personal life sections are mostly okay). The "First-class career summary" is longer than any other section and makes little attempt to summarise anything. "See also" links to season-by-season accounts are interspersed throughout the text, which is distracting and violates the manual of style. The section contains random information about his physical features, his nicknames, his drinking habits, and his family life, none of which belongs in a "summary". The other subsections under "Cricket career (1864 to 1914)" are unbalanced (why is so little attention given to his international career?), and some content is duplicated. There are frequent chronological jumps which make the article hard to follow.

In terms of prose, there is a tendency just to dump information with no attempt to relate it back to the section it's in or to the article as a whole. There is a bizarre amount of irrelevant details – cricket statistics, dates, monetary amounts, and locations – which add nothing to the article and in fact reduce its readability. They would be of little interest to someone wanting to write a biography of Grace, let alone to the general public. As evidence by Category:W. G. Grace there are already multiple "spin-offs" from this article, so it's hard to understand why this is the case. It seems like it just boils down to the writer(s) making poor choices as to what to include. Unfortunately, significant work is needed to bring the article up to scratch.

2. Verifiable?: The sources used are mostly of a high quality, and are generally presented in accordance with the manual of style. In the "First-class career summary" section, there are two sentences and one entire paragraph that are completely unreferenced. Citation 186 is a deadlink and does not appear to have been a reliable source in the first place, and citations 208 and 209 (relating to burial details) are sourced to a sightseeing website. Citation 201 (relating to Monty Python) is improperly formatted, and the overall citation style is sometimes inconsistent. There are several books used in inline citations that do not appear in the bibliography for some reason. The bibliography is also inconsistent in whether the publisher and ISBN are listed. Finally, there are several footnotes in the "References" that are not citations and only provide additional commentary on the article; these should be transferred to the "Footnotes" section.

3. Broad in coverage?: The article covers the vast majority of Grace's life and career in detail – as noted above, sometimes to the point of excess. The "Test career" seems somewhat short in comparison with other sections of the article, given the weight the general public usually places on international competition. Also, the article states that: "Grace played football for the Wanderers, although he did not feature in any of their FA Cup-winning teams." If Grace indeed played football for one of the foremost teams in England, then more than a single sentence should be able to be written on his football career.

4. Neutral point of view?: There are no apparent instances of biased writing, and there is an appropriate mixture of critical and non-critical writers. The article appears to reflect the general scholarly consensus on Grace's career without giving undue weight to either positive or negative views.

5. Stable?: The article is not (and is never likely to be) subject to any ongoing content dispute or edit war.

6. Images?: There are eleven images used in the article, all of which are in the public domain. The images are equally distributed through the article, and cover all aspects of Grace's life except his childhood – if any images from his childhood are available it would be great if they could be added (they would also public domain), but they're not essential. Some of the captions are overly wordy, in particular File:England v Australia 1899.jpg (subsection: W. G. Grace#Test career) – every in the photo doesn't need to be listed, only people relevant to the article.

It was something of a toss-up whether to quick fail this nomination, but unfortunately I believe per WP:GAC that the article is "a long way from meeting any one of the six good article criteria" (namely, that it is well written). Sadly the nominator made no attempts to improve the article's condition before nominating it, so placing it "on hold" does not seem like a useful option.

When these issues are addressed, the article can be renominated. If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to have it reassessed. Thank you for your work so far.— Ivar the Boneful (talk) 15:33, 19 August 2017 (UTC)