Talk:Cipher Bureau (Poland)/GA1

GA Review

Hello! I will be reviewing this article, and should have the full review up in a couple of hours. Dana boomer (talk) 13:24, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS):
External links (such as the one in the "In popular culture" section) should not be in the text itself, but instead in the external links section. It would be nice if the external links were consistently formatted, although this is not necessary.

The lead should be a summary of the entire article, and should not contain new information. Most of the information that is currently in the lead should be put in a "History" or "Start of the agency" or "Beginnings" section, and fully cited. Then the lead should be turned into a summary that briefly touches on all of the important points in the article.

I have not done a complete check of the prose, as I am the most worried about the lack of citations. As soon as the referencing is done or almost done, I will run back through the article for a full prose check.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
The inline citations for books should all have page numbers.

The references section should be organized alphabetically by last name.

You need MANY more in-line citations than you currently have. This is the major barrier before this article can reach GA status. Many sections, including "Enigma solved", "Secret preserved" and "In popular culture" have no citations at all. Quotations, such as in "Gift to allies" and "Battle of Warsaw" must have inline citations. Information that is an opinion, such as the statement of a moving being "fair, if superficial" in the "In popular culture" section, must have inline citations. Dates and other information that could be questioned should also have citations.
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
What happened to the agency itself? You have information on what happened to the people in the agency, but not the agency itself. Was it shut down, or is it still in operation, or was it adopted into another government division?
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
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):
There are a lot of images for an article this short. Do all of the images need to be included in the article? Of special concern are the two fair use images in the "Enigma solved" section. How do these contribute to the readers understanding of the topic?

Also, it is recommended that images be staggered right and left. The last three images in the article are all stacked on top of each other on the right hand side of the page.
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

This article needs a lot of work before it is ready to pass as GA. My main concern (as detailed above) is the lack of inline citations, although there are several other issues that need to be dealt with. I am going to put the article on hold for seven days to allow the editors time to work on these issues. If you need more time, please let me know, and if I see that work is continuing on the article I will extend the hold for a reasonable amount of time. Please contact me here (I have this page watchlisted) or on my talk page with any questions. Dana boomer (talk) 13:52, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am failing this article due to a lack of response on the issues above. When these issues have been resolved, the article may be renominated for GA status. Dana boomer (talk) 12:48, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Renominate for GA status?

In-line citations have now been supplied, and copyediting done, in case someone would like to consider renominating the article for GA status. Nihil novi (talk) 06:31, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA review, 2nd try

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Biuro Szyfrów/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

There are no disambiguous links. I also ran the article through AWB and fixed a couple of minor things.

Problems with links

There are 2 broken links in the references. The first is to enigmahistory.org and the second is for nsa.gov. It appears the NSA.gov is just missing the www. preceding it.

Lede

The lede needs to be expanded a little. It doesn't currently summerize the article.

Prose

there is quite a bit of prose work needed on the article. There are short choppy sentences, some weasel words, there are several areas were small sentences shoudl be combined for better flow and structure (such as the first the in the Polish-Soviet War section). There are even a couple places that sorta look as though they were copied verbatim from the source (I cannot verify that because I don't have the source personally). One example of this is the first 3 paragraphs of the Stalking Enigma section.

Inline citations

the first 2 paragraphs under Polish-Soviet War don't have all the required inline citations

Expansion

The section on Cipher Bureau needs to be expanded a bit. Is it still around? If not what happened to it? What duties did they have before they added the additional responsibilities?
The Kabaty Woods section needs to be expanded a little. Maybe some info about how it was better.

Reference issues

the first reference has a ? in the page number. If you don't know the ypage it would be better to leave it off unless the page number is actually ? for some reason.
refs 10, 11 and 14 could be combined like you do for 8.
under the references section the references shoudl be sorted by the authors last name in Last name, First name format.
refs 12 and 13 also look like the same refs with different formatting
it looks as thought there are a couple of references mentioned in the references
for the references that are written in polish (assuming its polish but) should reflect the language in the reference. You do it for some but all the non english references need it.

Images

I think the caption for the image with Hitler in his 6 wheeled mercedes should be changed a little. The image is referring to Hitler and his car but then states "Seven years earlier, the German military Enigma had been broken in this very building" I think it shoudl say something like "Seven years earlier, the German military Enigma had been broken in the building in the background."
The File:Gwido Langer Gustave Bertrand Kenneth McFarlan.jpg image has a deprecated tag and should be fixed.

The article in my opinion needs a lot of work to meet GA standards and my first imulse is to fail it but since I am pretty new to GA reviews I will put it on hold to give you a chance to work on it. --Kumioko (talk) 14:57, 2 April 2010 (UTC) Reviewer: Kumioko (talk) 14:57, 2 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your insightful suggestions. I think that I have addressed the matters that I am able to. Perhaps others can help with those that I don't know how to, such as illustration permissions. Nihil novi (talk) 11:57, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think it woudl be possible for you to note which items above you were able to accomplish. I can probably help you figure out the others. Not sure about the illustration question but I know a couple folks I can ask. --Kumioko (talk) 03:08, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think that, apart from the "File:Gwido Langer Gustave Bertrand Kenneth McFarlan.jpg" illustration, all the points have essentially been addressed.

Notes 10-14 refer to different sources (though some of them do appear in the same Kozaczuk 1984 Enigma book). Nihil novi (talk) 17:25, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I am promoting this article to GA, good job. --Kumioko (talk) 01:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you again for your perceptive critique of the article's original version. I don't know who nominated it for GA status, but I do know that your suggestions were crucial to its improvement. Thank you! Nihil novi (talk) 02:04, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]