Talk:Condom/GA1

GA Review

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Thank you for nominating this article. I will review it over the next several days. Regards, SBC-YPR (talk) 09:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First review

(Based on this revision dated 2009-07-01)

Thank you for nominating this article for good article review. I have assessed it against the six good article criteria, and commented in detail below:

1. Writing:

(a) Prose

The prose is generally clear throughout the article. A few minor issues with spelling and grammar:

Legal obstacles to manufacture and promotion of contraceptives were passed in many countries.: Reword this in a better manner - perhaps laws prohibiting the manufacture...were passed etc.
Still, condoms were promoted: Use Despite this instead of still.
Condoms were not promoted for disease prevention; the medical community and moral watchdogs considered STDs to be punishment for sexual misbehavior.: Replace the semicolon with a conjunction.
teaching about venereal diseases and how they were transmitted. They generally taught that abstinence was the only way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.: Rewrite in the passive voice, using children or students as subjects.
The stigma on victims: Replace on by against.
there continued to be social and legal obstacles to condom use in place in the U.S. and Europe.: Reword this to make it more clear and maintain the continuity of case - social and legal obstacles to condom use continued to be in place in the the U.S. and Europe
condoms sales : Replace with condom sales or sale of condoms.
Because it used water to suspend the rubber instead of gasoline and benzene, it eliminated the fire hazard previously associated with all condom manufacturers. Avoid beginning a sentence with because. Also, how could a fire hazard be associated with manufacturers? Shouldn't it have been associated with factories or manufacturing processes instead? Please clarify.
During the Depression, condom lines by Schmid gained in popularity: that company still used the cement-dipping method of manufacture.: Merge the second half of this sentence with the following one to maintain continuity.
(e.g. vaseline) Replace the parantheses with commas, and e.g. with such as.
Condoms made from one of the oldest condom materials, labeled "lambskin" (made from lamb intestines): Reword to Condoms made from lamb intestines, labeled "lambskin". The antiquity of lambskin is discussed earlier in the article.
they recommend : Convert to singular, since the subject (WHO) is in the singular.
all-over on: No hyphen between all and over. Also delete on.
either the inside, outside, or both; Reword to the inside, outside or on both sides of the condom;.
have a bulb-shape Replace with are bulb-shaped.
Studded condoms should be avoided with anal intercourse as it Replace it with they to maintain coherency of number.
Placing pinholes: The verb piercing might be more appropriate than placing.
sexual education: Use either this or sex education consistently through the article.
CPT (Cone Penetration Test): Place the abbreviation in parentheses and after the expansion.

Either American or British English should be used consistently throughout the article. The trend seems to favo(u)r American English, and it is suggested that all spellings conform to the same.

(b) Manual of style

The lead section is generally satisfactory and sums up the article well, but a line about the use of condoms in sex education and fertility treatment could be added.
The layout of the article could use a few changes:

The section on Public policy seems out of place on its own and could be merged into one of the preceding sections (Prevalence, etc.)
Since the hatnote specifically mentions the article to be about the male contraceptive device, the sub-section on "Female condom" is unnecessary. Also, the redirect to the French town could be merged into the second hatnote.
The sub-section on "Natural Latex" sounds over-emphasised. It is suggested that this be renamed to either "Natural" or "Latex".
The section on Research could be merged with the sub-section on "Other".

Peacock terms and weasel words, such as the following, should be avoided:

For the boom of the condom industry, it appears there is no end in sight.
One analyst described the size of the condom market as something that "boggles the mind".

2. Sourcing:

(a) References

It is suggested that harvnb citation templates be used while referring to the books by Collier and Kippley.
References need to be standardised to a uniform format.

(b) In-line citations

The following sentences require in-line citations:

Founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud opposed all methods of birth control on the grounds that their failure rates were too high. Freud was especially opposed to the condom because it cut down on sexual pleasure.
From 1955–1965, 42% of Americans of reproductive age relied on condoms for birth control. In Britain from 1950–1960, 60% of married couples used condoms. The birth control pill became the world's most popular method of birth control in the years after its 1960 debut, but condoms remained a strong second. Note: Every statistic must be referenced with an inline citation.
They have a greater ability to transmit body warmth and tactile sensation, when compared to synthetic condoms, and are less allergenic than latex.
According to the Ocean Conservancy, condoms, along with certain other types of trash, cover the coral reefs and smother sea grass and other bottom dwellers.

(c) Original research

The following appear to be WP:OR and must either be referenced or removed:

Several factors account for typical use effectiveness being lower than perfect use effectiveness (and the factors mentioned).
In the Muslim world, condom use is a hotly-debated issue. Also, the section on Kenya immediately after this sentence would suggest that it is an Islamic country, despite having a Muslim population of only 10% - as per this article and the sources mentioned therein. It is suggested that material from the Middle Eastern countries be used, if available, in order to provide more information on condom use in the Muslim World.

3. Broadness:

(a) Topic coverage

The article addresses the main aspects of the topic satisfactorily.

(b) Focus

The article stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail per WP:SS.

4. Neutrality:

The article largely maintains a neutral tone throughout. However, the section on Cultural factors focuses only on the opposition to the use of condoms. Material covering support for use of condoms, or cultures where condom use is commonly accepted, should also be incorporated.

5. Stability:

The edit history reveals the article to be stable with no recent edit wars or content disputes.

6. Images:

(a) Copyright status

All the images have been tagged with their copyright status.

(b) Relevance and captioning

The connection between the WW-I poster warning of the dangers of prostitution and the article is not clear. Other images are relevant to the topic.
Images have been provided with suitable captions.
Images illustrating various types of condoms, the condom manufacturing process, and alternative uses of condoms, if available, would be useful additions to the article.

As a result of the above, I have placed the article on hold, and editors have upto a fortnight from today to make the necessary changes. At the end of this period, the article will be re-evaluated, and a decision on whether to promote it to GA status will be taken. Feel free to contact me on my talk page for any clarifications. Regards, SBC-YPR (talk) 17:10, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to first review

Done

All prose concerns have been addressed
Lead expanded as suggested
The suggestions for the hatnote and public policy section have been implemented
Wording about "boom of the condom industry" removed
Collier and Kippley references converted to {{rp}} template
OR concerns addressed
Possible factor increasing condom use added to cultural factors section
Caption on questioned image changed to better tie the image into the article

Not done / Needs clarification _{(Note from reviewer: I have responded below, based on this revision. My comments are in italics. Regards, SBC-YPR (talk) 17:23, 24 July 2009 (UTC))}[reply]

I looked for the English spellings I am familiar with (colour, favour, centre, oestrogen) and did not find any in the article. Would the reviewer be more specific about the problem words? I could find at least one - flavoured under the Varieties section.
It is true that the hatnote specifies this article is about male condoms; however, it is also true that numerous readers do not read hatnotes. My experience with the intrauterine device article is that even though the hatnote says the article is about non-hormonal devices, readers still expect the hormonal devices to be covered in the article: lack of such coverage results in numerous IPs inserting it. While IP edits would never be a problem on the condom article (it is permanently semi-protected), I relate this experience because such a pattern of edits is a symptom that readers are not finding what they are looking for in an article. Having a small section on the female condom provides a link to that article for readers who miss the hatnote. For this reason, I am reluctant to remove that section. I think this is a policy issue that would be better addressed at Wikipedia talk:Hatnote. However, it would be fine, as User:WhatamIdoing has suggested, to just give it a mention under the Other section.
"Latex" can be used to mean either a product of natural rubber, or the synthetic product polyisoprene. "Natural" can mean either natural latex or lambskin. Neither term alone is specific, so I did not make the suggested change. Point noted - change not required.
All condoms discussed in the varieties section, including under other, are currently available for sale, and this section is near the top of the article. All the condoms discussed under research are not available anywhere. As such items are probably of less interest to most readers, this section is at the bottom of the page. This also creates a nice "past (history section), present (bulk of article), and future (research)" format for the article. If possible I'd like to avoid the suggested merger of the other and research sections. Your point about chronological classification is well taken. However, the version I reviewed had spray-on condoms mentioned in both sections, which made it unclear as to what the classification was actually trying to achieve. However, this has now been rectified, so the point comes across, and the merger is no longer required.
The "boggles" is presented as a quotation, not a statement, it is cited, and the text notes that it is a single person who made that statement. I believe including the quotation helps the reader grasp the size of the condom manufacturing industry better than simply saying there are "numerous" manufacturers. Is this sentence a for sure no-go for a GA article? It is not a sure no-go, but contrasts with the style of the rest of the article.
Three of the sentences described as "needing citation" were already cited: the relevant citations also support the sentence or two that follows the problem sentence. The fourth identified sentence has been modified so it is now in the same position as the other three. Is it required to repeat a citation on every sentence if the same cite supports two or three sentences? The general rule of thumb (from WP:V) is that All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. This would include all statistics. However, one reference for an entire paragraph is satisfactory, as long as the entire material is from the same source.
I formatted two references (the one for the government of India procuring 1.9 billion condoms, and the one about the Catholic Church opposing condom use). Are there others that need formatting? References # 2 and 108 need formatting. Also, references # 5 and 106 lack access dates, reference # 26 redirects to a page which does not reflect the content of the footnote, and references # 22, 41, 43, 54, 76 and 86 are all dead links.
I searched for additional pictures on Commons, and also looked through the first 100 results for CC-BY-SA condom images on flikr. These searches did not yield any pictures of different types of condoms, condom manufacturing, or any of the alternate uses discussed in this article. Images are only a recommendation - they are not absolutely essential. If free-use images cannot be found, there is no compulsion to add any images to the article.

Lyrl^Talk _C 20:16, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Having read through this, here are my thoughts on some of the outstanding issues:

Inclusion of female condom is an appropriate way to contrast the male condom with related options, and to provide context. It might be okay to de-emphasize it by merging it with the "other" section.
Differentiation of current products and speculative/future/research is appropriate.
The "boggles" quotation, while not something that it would have even occurred to me to ever add, adds color to the writing. Many of the proposed changes to the prose, while fine, were simply changes to make the article reflect the reviewer's personal stylistic preference rather than actual grammar and syntax problems (something that I'm sensitive to, because I have the same fault), and I assume that this is a similar request.
That WP:V (or WP:GA) requires citations to be repeated after every sentence in a paragraph is a common misconception.
WP:GA doesn't even require the presence of any images in an article. The reviewer's comments were (very good) suggestions, but finding such images is not required, so I wouldn't worry about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:18, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to second review

Done

flavoured changed to flavored
Formatted citations 2, 88, and 106 (was 108 in discussion above)
Added access dates to citations 5 and 103 (was 106 in discussion above)
All dead and redirecting links fixed (verify)

Not done

The items currently in the Other section are niche products. While female condoms are significantly less popular than the male variety, they are still used on a large scale: about 12 million used in 2005. I'm not convinced that it's appropriate to group them with anti-rape, collection, and novelty condoms. I'll like to wait a few days to see if there is any further discussion on this before making any changes.

Lyrl^Talk _C 03:40, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, that's a good reason for keeping it separate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have requested for a second opinion on this review. Perhaps we can arrive at a consensus after that. Regards, SBC-YPR (talk) 14:44, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If this is still a live issue, I would remove the Other section. The female condom is mentioned not only in the hat but also the lead, you could also add it as a see also. The anti-rape condom is a variety of the female condom. Collection condoms are discussed extensively below. And I'm not sure that "novelty condom" needs to be included, for example, there is no section in pencil for novelty pencils. At the same time, I don't think the Other section should stop this from being named a good article if the other issues have been addressed. I think it is difficult to deal with the issue of the female condom in a way that will be most useful to readers. We seem to not want a detailed discussion since there is another article, in that case I have no strong objection to a one sentence description with another link. I would probably at least put a "see below" with the collection condom. It can really be a Good article with or without the "Other" section (even though I would remove it as described). Thatcher 02:18, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Second opinion

Having read through the issues raised by the original reviewer, it seems that ENGVAR spelling and formatting of references remain as concerns.

I copied the entire article into MS Word and spell-checked it against the US dictionary. I've amended: sulphur->sulfur; litre->liter; travelling->traveling; aluminium->aluminum; combatting->combating; and believe that all spellings now match the US variants. The check also brought up the phrases "sensoring equipment" and "contracepting couples". These are (at best) awkward, and the article would benefit from minor rephrasing there. It may also be that "sociocultural" is better hyphenated. None of these would prevent me from concluding that the concerns about spelling have been met.

I accept that MEDRS is valuable in producing top-class medical articles, but I think it needs to taken in context here. Conformity with MEDRS is not a direct requirement of GA (although obviously desirable), and this article has broader general interest and coverage than the average medical article. For those reasons, I would expect some more-mainstream references to be appropriate here, and I would not see that as a reason for failing GA. The references do contain a number of reviews and overviews from high quality sources, although I would prefer more, and perhaps more sourcing from textbooks and other well-accepted publications. On the other hand, it is useful for the reader to be able to access so many of the sources online. In conclusion, therefore, although the balance of sourcing might be a disadvantage at FAC, I do not believe it is a sufficient concern to prevent this article from meeting the GA standard. --RexxS (talk) 14:21, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi RexxS,

Thanks for your response. If you happen to still be watching this page, your first sentence mentions ref formatting, but this isn't mentioned again, and the last paragraph is focused on selection of reliable sources. I'm not sure whether ref formatting (an issue about which the GA criteria are entirely silent) continues to be a concern, or if perhaps the choice of sources was more important to you than their appearance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:44, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes - the original reviewer mentioned ref formatting and I didn't see a "done" for that, so I was attempting to discern the outstanding issues that SBC-YPR still had. As far as ref formatting goes now, all I can see now are a few nit-picks that really shouldn't be a problem for GA: there's a small inconsistency in punctuation with authors that I'll go through and fix. The question of selection of sources seemed to be an issue for SBC-YPR, so I merely wanted to provide another view on that. I'm keeping the page on my watchlist, so please feel free to raise anything else that I haven't made clear. --RexxS (talk) 10:05, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: the inconsistencies with authors arises because the {{cite journal}} templates (and similar) allow authors to be given as "|last |first |coauthors" or "|last1 |first1 |last2 |first2 ..." or "|authors". Using "|last |first |coauthors" produces lastname, firstname; ... with the punctuation fixed by the template. Unfortunately a common citation style is lastname firstname, ... - as pubmed uses for example. So different editors using the freeform "|authors" will sometimes mimic pubmed and produce a mixture of styles for author names.

Anyway, I think I've made them all consistent. I found a couple of points: current ref 52 had a different author list previously from that given by pubmed - could you check out that ref? Current ref 105 is credited to Aiko Hayashi (from Associated Press), the CBS report has Bootie Cosgrove-Mather in the by-line. I don't know if it's preferable to credit the original reporter or the one responsible for the actual news article cited - your guess is as good as mine! --RexxS (talk) 11:05, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The disparity in ref 52 appears to be a combination case of a)spelling out the first name vs. using an initial and b)using two middle initials vs. one middle initial. So the abstract at interscience shows "Cornelis J.A. Hogewoning" while the abstract at Pubmed lists "CJ Hogewoning" and the interscience abstract shows "Maaike C.G. Bleeker" while Pubmed lists "MC Bleeker". I didn't think having two middle names was common, so it's interesting that, of the eight authors on that paper, four have two middle initials and one has three!

Regarding ref 105, there is the same article on the LA Times website, where the only author listed is Aiko Hayashi. As it seems all Ms. Cosgrove-Mather did was modify the title a little, I'm hesitant to list her as an author. I'd rather stick with the current link to CBS (I find their ads much less distracting), but if others think clearing up the authorship issue is important I'd reformat the ref to point to the LA Times website. Lyrl^Talk _C 18:16, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

another opinion

I think the article is very good, though there are a few concerns. First, I am concerned that the high number of citations used in the lead section is indicative that new information is being presented there. In fact, the lead should be a summary of the article -- while some citations are necessary, information from be cited in the article body and the lead should summarize that.

Second, regarding reference citations, I don't know what the non-linked numbers following many of the linked inline citations are? Since they're not linking anywhere, I have no idea what they're referencing. This does not appear to follow the manual of style.

The "anti-rape" condom needs to be cited.

The debate and criticism section has three main topic sections, but no introductory text in the section. There should ideally be some introductory text which connects these issues together somehow.

With regard to some of the technical criteria, I don't see any issues with neutrality or stability, and all images meet the copyright guidelines. So there are no problems there. The article does appear to be close to GA status, so if some of these style and citation issues could be addressed, I think it's good. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:32, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think I can shed some light on the non-linked numbers following some of the citations: they are page numbers - see Template:Rp. They are not common in Wikipedia, but seem to be acceptable, since WP:CITE#How to present citations states "Editors are free to use any method ...". Personally, I prefer using {{harvnb}} to cite different pages of the same book, but I haven't seen any particular objection to using {{rp}}. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 19:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The original reviewer also suggested {{harvnb}} for the Collier source (it was previously handled with straight footnotes, see the old reference section). I dislike mixing superscript citations with harvard citations, though, and did not want to convert the entire article to harvard citations, so I chose the {{rp}} template instead.

Reading through this, I realized that the reason the original reviewer asked for a second opinion—whether the female condom section should stay or not—hasn't been addressed by either additional reviewer. Do either of you have a comment on that?

I don't have time today, but I intend to address the issues raised by RexxS and Dr.Cash tomorrow. Thanks for all the help so far! Lyrl^Talk _C 21:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there apparently is a template for those odd citations in wikipedia, so using them shouldn't hold up a GA review, IMHO. Although I have never seen that particular type of formatting anywhere but Wikipedia, so if others suggest Harvard referencing or something else, then I would suggest going with that. I just didn't know what those other, non-linked numbers were, and I'm sure other readers may have been confused as well. Dr. Cash (talk) 21:26, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can see WhatamIdoing's point about readers wanting information on female condoms (and not reading hatnotes), but I think that SBC-YPR is right to ask for focus, given the article chooses specifically to discuss the male condom. On balance, I'd recommend incorporation of a brief sentence into the "Other" section, mainly to provide a wikilink to the Female condom article. That's just my judgement call, so make sure you get other opinions. --RexxS (talk) 01:01, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again for your comments; they're very helpful. It has rather belatedly occurred to me that the anti-rape condom is also a form of female condom, so combining them in the same section makes even more sense. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:13, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've addressed everything except the concern over the number of citations in the lead. Citations 3,4, and 5 appear to be holdovers from when an "overview" section (old version with "overview" section) was incorporated into the lead (version showing only those citations plus one from a sentence that was later deleted). Citations 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8 all used elsewhere in the article to support the same statements made in the lead; they were duplicated in the intro in response to {{fact}} tag additions (I can dig up the diffs if anyone is interested). Citation 5 is also used in the body of the article. Should these citations be removed from the lead?

Dr. Cash was right about the "inexpensive, easy to use, having few side effects" bit supported by citations 3 and 4 not being talked about elsewhere in the article. I've added that to the "use" section, so 3 and 4 are now in the same position as the other citations in the lead. Lyrl^Talk _C 19:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Having citations in the lead is often a sign that you have facts in there that are not developed in the rest of the article. My advice is to examine each of them and see if you can locate the corresponding section where that cite would also fit. If it doesn't fit, consider expanding that section to develop what is in the lead. When that is done, move the cites from the lead to the section (obviously just deleting the cites that would be duplicates). There may be rare occasions where a statement (or quote) is appropriate in the lead, but not in the main text - see WT:Lead section#Problem for a current discussion of that - in such a case it would be appropriate to make the cite in the lead. I haven't the familiarity with this article that you have, so I can only give the above advice as general advice; you'll need to make the judgement calls for each cite in this case. Usually you will find that it's a worthwhile exercise and moving cites out of the lead actually improves the article. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 10:18, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Only one of the citations in the lead was not addressed in the body of the article. As I indicated above, I fixed that last week, making all of the citations in the lead duplicates. I have now removed them. Lyrl^Talk _C 12:38, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Recap

The GAN page has an active request for second opinion. What are the current outstanding issues? Thatcher 22:53, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that there are no outstanding issues since you've passed the article. I concur with passing it. It looks fine. Though I would still recommend doing something about those weird numbers in the citations. Dr. Cash (talk) 14:36, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean the page numbers after the Collier book? Or something else? Thatcher 15:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]