Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/1980 (Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson album)/1

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1980 (Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson album)[edit]

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review
Result: Not listed per consensus that it's better to just renominate at GAN. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 18:41, 20 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The reviewer of the original good-article nomination, Tbhotch, imposed their personal criteria rather than the criteria outlined at WP:GA?, in failing the nomination. Specifically, they lamented the absence of a "Background" section and made impractical suggestions to conjure one up, dismissing the fact that any further information about the album is out of the scope of the available literature and sources on the topic; I even provided an example of the topic's relatively mediocre 3rd-party coverage in the form of Scott-Heron's AllMusic bio, its skimpiness, its factual errors. The reviewer misused the "broad in its coverage" point (point a) of criteria 3 as a means to encourage the article to meet their personal critera; according to WP:What the good article criteria are not: "Point (a) means that the 'main aspects' of the topic, according to reliable sources, should each be 'addressed' in the article; it does not require comprehensive coverage of these major aspects, nor any coverage of minor aspects ... Mistakes to avoid - Requiring the inclusion of information that is not known or addressed by reliable sources." Dan56 (talk) 23:31, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is reinforced at the actual good-article criteria page: The "broad in its coverage" criterion is significantly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required of featured articles. It allows shorter articles, articles that do not cover every major fact or detail, and overviews of large topics. (WP:GA?#cite note-6) The words this reviewer kept citing and would not waver from was "as a reader I am not reading why the album exists", which is their own words, their own criteria, and vague (there are many reasons an album can exist, usually because it was recorded and released, which is explained by the article, but apparently there are other reasons for the reviewer, reasons they did not themselves specify yet wanted stated in the article; "impractical suggestion"). Dan56 (talk) 00:55, 5 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not until their closing comments bloviated about other articles that exist in the manner they prefer, did they explicate their vague personal criteria, but it is buried in a torrent of hostile, personalizing remarks, in frustration over having their reviewing mistakes called out as "lazy" and "presumptive" (presumptive, because, to go back to the above issue, they had given no effort in going over the available source material on the topic themselves and were just blindly guessing, hoping, imagining?... that there is more information out there on the album's reason for existing. The reviewer did not define at all what they wanted this supposed "Background" section to explain or what specific information to hold; they just assumed it exists out there and the article should follow this form, conceptually, superficially.... Dan56 (talk) 23:31, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Elsewhere, with more ancillary concerns like a link (the shah) redirecting to an associated article (an association the reviewer did not give a concrete position on, but ultimately used to fail the article), the reviewer often gave problems, rather than solutions, and left me having to clarify without an idea as to how they wanted me to fix it. The aforementioned link was used as a grounds for failure as well: as WP:GAR points out, however: compliance with the Manual of Style are not covered by the GA criteria and therefore not grounds for delisting; WP:GACN reinforces this: Mistakes to avoid - Demanding compliance with your favorite MoS pages ... Requiring the resolution of links to disambiguation pages. Dan56 (talk) 23:46, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Dan56 asked me to participate in this GAR at my talk page (in what I felt was a respectful, neutral way). I have not participated in a GAR before, but I have reviewed articles at GA and FA, including articles written primarily by Dan56. These included an unusually extensive review (continued at the talk page) for the article Fôrça Bruta. I say this at the outset to be clear about what brought me here and what my relationship with Dan56 is. I've worked with him closely and I think he's done good work, but I also feel I have maintained critical distance from his work. I have critiqued his work quite extensively when I felt it was necessary to do so and have disagreed often with Dan56 about particular issues (sometimes these issues have resolved in my favor, while other times Dan56 has convinced me to reconsider my original stance). Point being, I feel I can be reasonably objective here, and I'm not here as Dan56's backup.
As to the GAR process itself: I don't think I'm going to take a stance supporting or opposing this. GAR strikes me as a little odd for issues beyond delisting, though it seems to be permissible—Tbhotch opened the door to the process in his comment when he closed the review. My own instincts would have been to simply renominate the page, as Tbhotch also suggested in his comments, and that would be less contentious than this process. On the other hand, it does make some sense to me for there to be a procedure to resolve disputes over reviews that the nominator has reason to believe were erroneous or contrary to the rules, as Dan56 seems to believe is the case.
That said: Dan56, I think Tbhotch has a point about your tone. I'm not really interested in litigating the specifics of this issue as it applies to this review, but I think it's worth bringing up all the same. I've reviewed your work a few times and I've participated in a few content disputes that you were involved in; I've been on your side in disputes, and I've been on the other side too. In my observation, you have sometimes been aggressive or impatient in disputes over article content or policy/procedure, and sometimes you've been rude—as I believe you have been to Tbhotch. I'm not saying you always behave this way; there's no doubt you've been perfectly cordial and respectful in the past, too. I think you tend to cross a line when you feel someone else has been unreasonable, and whether you're right or wrong about that in a given situation, your responses can tend to escalate these situations. This behavior can be off-putting, and it sometimes hinders your ability to resolve issues in your favor. Wikipedia can be frustration... and I've felt that same frustration myself at times, believe me.
But there's a difference between expressing reasonable disagreement—or even expressing frustration with another user's actions that you feel are unreasonable—and expressions of disrespect. I don't want to discourage you or make you feel I'm taking sides against you. Your contributions to Wikipedia are extensive and really valuable; I really admire the overall quality of your research and writing, your sheer prolificness, and (above all) your unassailable good taste. My intentions in bringing this up are sincere and come from a place of respect for you and your work, and I hope that comes through as you read this. But when things heat up, you should consider taking a step back to make sure you are treating other users with respect and conducting yourself in a way other users will perceive as reasonable and respectful.
Now that that's out of the way, I want to move on to the actual points of contention regarding the review. First, I wouldn't go so far as to say Tbhotch imposed their own personal criteria. There are inevitably going to be matters on which a reviewer is going to have to interpret the policy in order to apply it. Whether Tbhotch was right on every issue or not, I think it's fair to say he made a good-faith effort to apply the GA criteria. Here's where I come down on the individual issues:
  • Necessity of background section: I don't think it's strictly necessary for a GA-level album article to have a Background section, in the sense of a section that has a ==Background== heading. There may not be enough material to justify including a separately designated section on background material. I don't feel too strongly about the inclusion of a heading one way or another. However, I think it is reasonable to ask for some text on background material whenever possible, even if it's to a minimal extent. I say this with awareness of the distinction between the GA requirement to be "broad" in coverage and the FA requirement of comprehensiveness, but it does bring to mind some edits during the Fôrça Bruta FAC.
When you nominated Fôrça Bruta, it looked like this and did not have a designated "Background" section—instead, it jumped in with "Recording and production". The article did include textual content that amounted to contextual "background" material, it just wasn't labeled as such. During my review, I brought up what I felt were issues with organization and inclusion of background material. While I didn't ask for a separate "Background" section, I did ask for a more chronological organization and front-loading of contextual/background info in the "Recording" section. Over the course of your revisions, you created a separate, one-paragraph section for "Background". I hadn't called for this change, but I thought it was a good idea; I commented "I think adding the short 'Background' section was a good idea, too." I would have been happy with including this paragraph either as the first paragraph of the "Recording" section or as its own section, but I think making it its own section ended up being the better idea (and it happened to be your own idea).
Now, I know a bit about Gil Scott-Heron myself and I agree with Dan56 that, for a musician of his significance, there is a regrettable paucity of secondary source material about him. Tbhotch, you pointed out that Winter in America is a GA as a counterpoint to Dan56's protest that there isn't much material on Gil Scott-Heron; it's true that Winter in America is quite comprehensive—Dan56 wrote that one too, incidentally—but Scott-Heron's career as a whole is covered very unevenly in secondary sources. You can talk about the context of Scott-Heron and Jackson's collaborations, but there may not be material about how that led up to this album in particular. While I haven't reviewed all the available source material for this particular album, I don't find it hard to believe that there may be a comparative absence of source material specifically covering the "background" of this album. I personally know Dan56 to be a thorough researcher, so if I were the reviewer here I would have likely taken his word on the issue—not saying it was necessary to simply take his word and move on, just speaking for myself based on my past experience with Dan56 and background knowledge of the subject.
With that caveat: I nevertheless think what Tbhotch had asked for was reasonable. Judging from his review and GAR comments, it seems like he was just asking for whatever minimal material was available, which would have included general statements explaining the history of Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson's past collaborations—for instance, noting 1980 was the duo's sixth collaboration, and noting that it followed Secrets, which was a similar-sounding album. This may have only amounted to two or three sentences, but I think there's enough material for a background paragraph (whether it has its own heading or not). That's not asking to dredge up something that isn't there in the sources, it's just asking for presentation of whatever context there is, however minimal.
  • Original research: I don't think linking "the shah" to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is an original research problem. I don't think there's any room for ambiguity or doubt that Christgau was referring to Mohammad Reza. It's not a jump to take Christgau's naming of "the shah" as a reference to Mohammad Reza, who was at the time (and continues to be) referred to simply as "the Shah" or "the Shah of Iran". This was also at the time of the Iranian Revolution and Iran hostage crisis, putting "the Shah of Iran" in the forefront of American consciousness. Reference to a "shah" or "the shah" in American media at this time should be presumed to refer the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza, unless explicitly specified otherwise.
This is not a stretch or an example of original research in interpretation. Analogously, mention of "the Queen of England" in 1980 (or now) presumptively refers to Elizabeth II, and mention of "the Pope" in 1980 would presumptively refer to the person Pope John Paul II. Indeed, the titles "Queen of England" or "Pope" are more familiar in the western context than the title "shah", so the presumption that "shah" = "Mohammad Reza" would be stronger than either of the other two inferences; it's far more plausible that a reference to "the Pope" may refer to the title of pope in a generic sense (the phrase "does the pope shit in the woods?", for instance, does not refer to any individual pope at all), while it's hardly likely that a reference to "the shah" refers to the title in general or an obscure shah. The fact that Christgau refers to the Shah is "dead" is not great evidence that he's referring to the title rather than the person, either. It's true that the office of the shah was abolished before the review, and Mohammad Reza died shortly after the review, but the title of the song is "Shah MOT (The Shah Is Dead/Checkmate)". Christgau is only referring back to Scott-Heron's (poetic) declaration of death.
Regardless, MOS:LINKQUOTE is not really an original research policy, it's a stylistic policy. It cautions against getting it wrong in interpretation, which is overlaps with OR concerns, but again I don't think there's reason to believe this link gets it wrong, much less gets it wrong so badly that it becomes a serious OR concern. Unfortunately, I think tensions had gotten high enough at this point that a disagreement over a comparatively small matter like this blew up the process.
  • Studio — this is a final issue that was raised in the closing of the review, not the review itself. Nonetheless, it's a fair point and it looks like the answer is found in the liner notes. The studio was TONTO in Santa Monica, California, as gleaned from a scan of the LP liner notes (on the Arista 201 733 issue of the album). This is the same studio as the previous album Secrets.
All told... I'm a bit exhausted going over all this in-depth. I hope this comment helps contribute to productively moving forward and sorting out the problems at play here. —BLZ · talk 06:13, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding Tbhotch's reasons given for failing:
    • 1b Disagree on statutory grounds. Whether or not the article fails MOS:LINKQUOTE is irrelevant to WP:GA?, because 1b only requires compliance with 5 specific MoS pages, none of which include MOS:LINKQUOTE. See What the Good article criteria are not#1.
    • 2c Weak disagree with labelling the link in "the shah (dead)" as WP:OR. I can appreciate that this is close to the borderline of OR, but I would have gone the other way on this. I find the alternative interpretation offered by Tbhotch (that the author was saying that the title of "shah" was dead, rather than the individual commonly referred to as "the Shah" who had in fact recently died) highly implausible. Also, the fact that it's a non-piped wikilink (i.e. that [[the shah]] is actually a redirect to the person in question) makes me feel like there's less of a leap in ascribing the author's intent.
    • 3a Neutral This is tricky because "major aspects" is subject to personal interpretation, and unfortunately the term isn't really defined in any policy document. I definitely think a "Background" section should not be imposed as a GA requirement in this case (and the WikiProject advice page that Tbhotch linked to in his review is not binding in a GA context). As for whether more information is needed somewhere in the article about why the album exists and where it was recorded, neither of these personally strike me as major ommissions. But I also don't think Tbhotch is being unreasonable, even if his definition of "major aspects" differs from mine. I do think a sentence or two giving context about Scott-Heron and Jackson's collaborations up until this point would be welcome. I think insisting on giving the recording studio is a bit much. The question of "Where?" is very important in an article about a building, a protest, a natural disaster, or species of butterfly. For many other subjects, it's of little importance (say, an article about a font, a number, or a thought experiment). In most cases, I think the location where an album was recorded is little more than trivia. I think the "Five Ws" theory of broad coverage does come across a bit like "personal criteria" and I'd be wary of applying it in a procrustean manner.
As for conduct of the editors involved, I think both could have tried a little harder to be nice. I find many of Tbhotch's comments to be a little peremptory in tone, and though Dan56's comments started out cordial, they let their frustration get the better of them in later comments which were mildly sarcastic or hostile.
Agree with BLZ that re-nominating is probably the simplest way forward here. Colin M (talk) 18:15, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The Good Article process has inherent weaknesses, a major one being that it relies on the co-operation between a single nominator and a single reviewer. Once that relationship breaks down the whole review often falls apart. The criteria allow a certain amount of leeway in there interpretation, so it is rarely helpful for one side to insist their interpretation is the only one. At the end of the day the ultimate aim is to improve an article and that often involves some reasonable compromises. We are in short supply of willing reviewers and it can be a bit of a thankless task, so I personally like to give them a bit more latitude when it comes to these disputes, but will admit there have been issues with reviewers getting a bit caught up in their own criteria.
I have no problem with reviewers adding comments that fall outside the criteria, in fact this is almost always a good thing. The problem happens when they insist that these must be resolved in order to pass, often against the wishes of the nominator. If you find yourself in this situation it is best to ask yourself, "is this really required". As a reviewer I take the approach that they are the content experts and know much more about the subject material than me. The criteria are not really that strict. You can, and should, still stand your ground on key issues though.
Brandt Luke Zorn and Colin M} have left some very good points and I can only endorse them. Technically we could get consensus to overturn this, but it is not a black and white case and this process is not very well attended. My advice is to withdraw, work through the suggestions above and then re-nominate. This is likely to be closed as no consensus to overturn and then you will have to go through GAN again anyway. AIRcorn (talk) 22:00, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree with what Aircorn just said. All the issues pointed out above need to be adressed. Despite not being mandatory having a background section. A reference to Scott-Heron and Jackson's work up to this point, and if a studio where the album was recorded, mixed and mastered should also be added, it's important since we are talking about an album. MOS:LINKQUOTE needs to be adressed, but it does't give an article fail, the reviewer should point out to that, ofc. Secondly, I can see where Tbhotch is coming from saying that the article is not broad on its coverege, I would sit on the fence here since there are not actual criteria for this saying that needs this many works, kbs and to each their own. If I was reviewing the article I would ask you would add a bit more to the recording and production section with studios and the reference I pointed out above for example, and the Scott-Heron picture needs to be reduced in its size, it goes for three section, no need for that. Furtheremore, there is no need for that hostility I can see that failing an article can be quite frustrating since you put work and your hours to it. Finally, I don't blame Tbhotch for failing the article, he has indeed taken the criteria in consideration and as he sees it has failed the broad on its coverage, what some people forget every now and then its that not every article created in wikipedia can become a GA article. But I do believe if all these comments are taken into consideration it might meet said criteria. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 15:16, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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