Talk:Billy Bremner/GA2

GA Reassessment

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Issues

Starting with MOS:LEAD as part of GACR#1b. The lead has several issues beginning in the opening sentence, which states that Billy was "known for his strength, skills and compact constitution". None of that appears in the narrative and so it is unsourced POV, perhaps OR. The word "skill" is used only once in the article, in the context of him having negotiated a transfer deal as a manager. There is no style and technique section to outline his assets as a player, which were considerable.

The second sentence of the lead says: A midfielder, he played for Leeds United from 1959 to 1976, and captained the side during this time, which was the most successful period of the club's history. That is misleading. The career dates are correct but Bremner became captain of Leeds from the end of 1965 (the date is unclear in the narrative) and, by then, Leeds had already become highly successful under Bobby Collins, who was Bremner's predecessor as captain. As for his early years there, Leeds did not become successful until 1963–64 when they won the Second Division.

GACR#1 requires the article to be well written. It isn't. There are numerous grammatical and contextual issues. These are just a few examples only, and all from the lead only:

Billy's surname appears only once in the entire lead. There are a dozen or so sentences driven by "he". The reader needs to see the surname much more frequently.

Throughout the article, there is excessive and unnecessary use of words like also, however and though. These are often used out of context and disrupt the flow of the narrative. There is an example in the second paragraph of the lead. The second sentence is entirely about Leeds and their many runner-up finishes with no mention of Bremner. Then, the third sentence begins: He was also named as.... That use of also is out of context because the subject has changed and it is unnecessary anyway because this is the first mention of an individual achievement – the things Billy won with Leeds were team achievements. The first use of also, if desired, should be later in the sentence where it could be said he was also included in the PFA Team of the Year.

The third paragraph in the lead begins: He spent the period from 1976 to 1978 at Hull City. What did he do there? Why not say: Bremner played for Hull City from 1976 to 1978 – after all, he was a player and he did play in 61 matches for Hull; he didn't just spend time there.

Later in the third paragraph, why use a phrase like He spent seven years at the helm? That is tabloid-speak. He was managing a football team, not sailing a ship.

He could not get the club promoted back into the top flight is bad English. You could say: He failed to gain promotion to the top flight which is simple and meaningful, although a term like "top flight" might confuse some readers.

GACR#3b requires the article to stay focused on the topic. For 1965 to 1968, there are two large paragraphs occupying half the screen and using five citations which say nothing at all about the topic. I entirely agree with the IP editor who wrote Talk:Billy Bremner#Leeds or Bremner? in September 2018, but received no answer. If you look at those two paragraphs, there isn't one single mention of Bremner or even a hint that he might just be the subject of the article. From the end of 1965 to summer 1968, then, what was Billy up to in those two and a half years when Leeds were one of the best three teams in England and he was their best player? As the IP says, who cares what Greenhoff had to say about winning the League Cup? Billy used to talk to the media so what about quoting him, or at least quote Revie on the subject of Billy's value to Leeds at that time.

GACR#2 deals with verification. The piece about The Damned United is unsourced. Until we reach Billy's death in December 1997 and go online thereafter, there are 122 citations and all but ten of them come from a single source about which one reviewer has written: "I was somewhat disappointed with this book, namely because it tells you so little about Billy Bremner the man. We learn barely nothing about his private life and there is no in depth analysis on his relationship with his team mates". Indeed, the article is more about Leeds during Billy's time there than about Billy himself and so, as well as 3b above, it also fails GACR#3a because it omits several main aspects and thereby doesn't adequately cover the scope. As mentioned above, there is no style and technique section and that is necessary for a player like Bremner who was noted for many aspects including his industry, his team play, his passing, his ball winning, his will to win, his leadership and his fiery temperament.

If I were to select this article now from the GAN queue, it would be an instant WP:GAFAIL because it is a long way from meeting both GACR#1 and GACR#3b while there are also doubts about GACR#2 and concerns about the article being largely reliant upon a single source which may not be WP:RS. No Great Shaker (talk) 14:46, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Question Wouldn't it be better if you took your time to improve the article instead of critique it? Govvy (talk) 16:25, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Govvy, I'll try to refrain from giving a stupid answer to a stupid question. The process here is WP:GAR which you should first read and attempt to understand. The process requires interested parties to discuss the article's suitability for GA status to establish whether it should remain a GA or be delisted. As for my being able to improve the article, the short answer is that I can't because I haven't got the necessary sources. What a waste of time. No Great Shaker (talk) 16:40, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

First of all, I would have to agree with Govvy. Point 1 of the Good article reassessment states "Fix any simple problems yourself. Do not waste minutes explaining or justifying a problem that you could fix in seconds. GAR is not a forum to shame editors over easily fixed problems." The points you raise seem rather minor and easily fixed by yourself.

Well written is defined by the Good article criteria as "the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct". Note the essay What the Good article criteria are not, which states: "the meaning of each sentence or paragraph is clear and not confusing, even if you might have phrased it differently". Your contention that "excessive and unnecessary use of words like also, however and though" does not, therefore, mean that the article is not well written. Note, that the good article criteria is NOT of the same standard as Featured articles, the criteria of which being "its prose is engaging and of a professional standard". You are requiring much too high a standard for GA reassessment. However, as you have taken the time to review the article then I will respond to your concerns below and edit the article accordingly.

I have changed "known for his strength, skills and compact constitution" and added in sources for the new sentence which describes his great skill. I have reworded the second sentence to make it clear at what stage he was appointed as captain but find your claim that it was misleading as bizarre. You state that the club were already "highly successful" under Collins pre 1965, but that Leeds "did not become successful" until 1964. I don't believe it is necessary to break down the statement in such a way as to make clear that the club weren't particularly successful from 1959 to 1963, then were successful after that stage. Can we not have some common sense here? I think it's particularly pedantic for someone to dispute the statement by saying that the club were not hugely successful for the first four years of his seventeen year playing career. Anyway, I have specified the starting point for his captaincy in the lead now.

I will continue to work on this later.--Echetus Xe 17:48, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think you will have a lot of work to do and that you will need to use a lot of common sense to accomplish it. I only pointed out the contextual, grammatical and illogical issues in the lead. I didn't perform a full review of the narrative which is just as bad, if not worse. I am not applying too high a standard at all. Bad writing is bad writing and must fail a good article review. Anyway, the poor grammar and excessive howevers are the least of the issues.

Where is the style and technique section to bear out what the lead said about Bremner's ability? Why is there only a single source for such a high percentage of content, and a source which has attracted unfavourable reviews too? Why is there so much about what the Leeds team did when the article is a biography? Those are hardly minor errors that anyone can fix in a second or two, so your claim about simple problems is nonsense.

If you were the main author and you can't accept constructive criticism, then that's your problem.

The purpose of GAR is to ensure that articles with GA status are fit for purpose. This one is way below the standard. No Great Shaker (talk) 21:08, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so to continue from where I left off. "The reader needs to see the surname much more frequently" - any particular reason for this? Well, I've added Bremner into the lead a few times for you. "excessive and unnecessary use of words like also, however and though", Ive already addressed this earlier by clarifying that the article is clear and not confusing. Good article's well written criteria does not require articles to be rewritten in a style which you personally prefer. Listing trophies a player won in a team sport seems rather reasonable to me despite you trying to somehow divorce Bremner from these team achievements. I'm happy to make minor improvements that you suggest to rephrase sentences, but as it stands the article clearly meets the Good article standard as being "clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience".

"there are two large paragraphs occupying half the screen and using five citations which say nothing at all about the topic". Forgive me, but those paragraphs appear to be describing the performances of the team of which Bremner was a part. Bremner played in those matches for Leeds so that makes them somewhat relevant to an article section about his playing career for Leeds United would you not say? If you have any quotes from or about Bremner during that period then please feel free to add them in, but the lack of them in those seven sentences does not make the article unfocused.

You seem to be arguing that a published biography written about the subject does not count as a reliable source because "one reviewer" has written a slightly critical review? That does seem to be your arguement as you blithely cite the good article criteria, which for the record states: "all inline citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons". So that does seem to be your arguement does it not? That "one reviewer" wrote a slightly critical review of the biography so therefore it cannot be considered a reliable source?

I would suggest that you could have spent the time you spent looking at reviews of the book in writing a playing style section yourself, the absence of which, does not cause this article to be a WP:GAFAIL. As for the tags, if you can convince one other person that "the article taken as a whole may lack a single, central point of focus or appears to be about more than one topic" then I will be very surprised. As for "relies largely or entirely on a single source", well, a single source with 25 other sources. That is not an appropriate use of that tag.--Echetus Xe 01:00, 18 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

EchetusXe, you are being obtuse and trying to twist everything. You began your "defence" by saying Point 1 of the Good article reassessment states "Fix any simple problems yourself. Do not waste minutes explaining or justifying a problem that you could fix in seconds. GAR is not a forum to shame editors over easily fixed problems." The points you raise seem rather minor and easily fixed by yourself. I suggest you read the entire guideline, especially the introductory statement which says: Unless an article's issues are extensive, consider taking the following steps before initiating a reassessment (my italics). Point 2 says: Tag serious problems that you cannot fix with appropriate template messages.

Concerns about WP:NPOV and WP:NOR are serious policy issues. You say I should create a style and technique section, but I have already said above that I haven't got the necessary sources. Or do you want me to create the section based on my own memories of Billy Bremner as a player? I rather think that would be a major breach of WP:NOR, don't you?

While you have focused on GACR#1 as applied to the lead, you seem to be overlooking the narrative which, as I have said, is just as bad if not worse. I haven't written a full review of the narrative but it would be as long as your arm.

You ask me to convince "one other person" about the point of focus issue. Again, please read everything I have written above and you will see that I am endorsing the complaint made by the IP editor in 2018 who rightly pointed out that the article is a biography of Billy Bremner and not a summary of Leeds United's performances, especially the years 1966 to 1968 when, for all the reader knows, Billy might not have played at all. The one other person you require is in fact myself, because I am in agreement with the IP editor who raised that issue first.

You say you have "already addressed this (however, etc.) earlier by clarifying that the article is clear and not confusing". You haven't clarified anything. In any narrative, there are aspects called context and flow. A good article is one that retains context and enables flow. Nearly every time a word like however or though or also crops up in this article, the context is lost and the flow is interrupted. You say the subject's surname is unnecessary after the first three words. Well, the reader likes to be reminded of who the subject is in case someone else has been mentioned. Again, this disrupts the flow if the reader has to pause and ask if the "he" in this paragraph is still Bremner.

You need to read WP:GAFAIL which says (relevant bits only): An article can, but by no means must, be failed without further review if, prior to the review, it is a long way from meeting any one of the six good article criteria (or) it has, or needs, cleanup banners that are unquestionably still valid.

As I have pointed out, if this article were in GAN now, it would fail immediately because it is a long way from meeting certain criteria and it needs cleanup banners. It would fail GACR#1 because it is not well written. The prose is not clear because it does not flow and it loses context. You say it is understandable to an appropriately broad audience but it assumes the readers are all football fans – for example, I can understand everything easily enough and so can my son-in-law who supports Blackburn Rovers, but my wife and daughter are not football fans and neither of them understood the article or could make much sense of it. They both commented on the lack of flow. On the other hand, I asked them to read Bill Shankly as a comparison and they both said it is easily readable and just needs a bit of housekeeping here and there. My wife is a former lecturer who specialised in something called the English language and she says the Bremner article lacks focus and is too technical. She agrees that the club career section is essentially about Leeds and, interestingly, her view (as an English expert) is that the section largely uses Bremner as an example of a Leeds player – I must admit I never thought of that and she's absolutely right.

As well as GACR#1, there are the issues about POV, OR, scope, single source and loss of focus. There is no way it would pass a fresh GA review and, unless it is considerably improved to meet the GACR within the next six days, I as the GAR assessor will delist it from GA. With any GA review, it is the reviewer's opinion that counts and you are hardly likely to gain any sympathy by being so defensive and refusing to accept criticism.

The purpose of both GAN and GAR is to improve the article. I am not trying to demote the article because I don't support Leeds or some idiotically petulant reason like that. I actually met Billy Bremner in the course of my work and I would like to see Wikipedia honour him with an appropriately good article.

I'm diarising this for next Thursday and taking it off my watchlist in the meantime. I'll come back then and decide if it has been sufficiently improved. I particularly want to see a style and technique section citing multiple sources. Everything else should be easy enough. No Great Shaker (talk) 10:39, 18 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with NGS here. The cleanup banner makes it eligible for delist. In addition, the "Leeds United" section could use stronger focus on Bremner himself and sectioning for readability. (t · c) buidhe 23:24, 20 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Summary

It's now a whole week since this was raised at WP:GAR and little has been done to improve the article other than the relatively minor points I raised about the lead. The article is supposed to be a biography but, as Buidhe has rightly pointed out, it needs stronger focus on Bremner himself. Also, as I've said before, a multi-faceted player like Billy Bremner needs a style and technique section to present an analysis of his skills, his combative approach, his temperament and his leadership.

I've decided to delist because, in my opinion as reviewer, the article is start-class only. No Great Shaker (talk) 15:33, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]